The Ultimate Guide to Disability- & (chronic) Illness-fiction (2026-update)
- The Fiction Fox
- 17 hours ago
- 12 min read
Representation within fiction has been a huge passion of mine for as long as I've been active as a reviewer. No form of representation has had the same personal significance to me, as that of disabled, (chronically) ill or divergent bodies. Growing up, illness and disability were always a big part of my life, and I've spoken about how it shaped my relationship with reading as well. My love of reading started in hospital-beds, escaping the reality of my own "stroke of bad genetic luck": a rare form of cancer as a child, the life-long chronic health-detriments that came with ánd a completely separate progressive genetic connective-tissue-disease. I read together with my mum, who was also wheelchair-bound for as long as I can remember, and we were always on the hunt for books where we could see those parts of ourselves reflected on the pages. Unfortunately, growing up, those books were few and far between. Over the years however, I've gathered quite the collection of gems that I would love to share with anyone on a similar journey. This list has been a labour of love that has been years in the making, and has since grown into a beast of extraordinary substance, featuring over 100 titles and counting.
Please note that I will only be focusing on physical illnesses/disabilities in this list, as mental illness, neurodivergence etc deserve their own seperate list in the future.
I also have a separate section on fiction that focusses on the perspective of caregiving for someone with a disability/illness, as well as a section that deals specifically with mental health.
This list in total encompasses over 100 titles, so I cannot provide full descriptions for each, with the exception of my personal favourites. All books are linked to their respective Goodreads-page where you can read more about them.
Each person’s experience with (chronic) illness or disability is unique, so every reader will be seeking something different in their fiction. I’ve attempted to cluster them according to the little menu below, for ease of navigation.
Personal Favourites (top 5)
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies – Maddie Mortimer Genre: literary fiction Representation: cancer (protagonist)
One line synopsis: Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies is the lyrical tale of a woman, her body and the illness that coinhabits it. Told from the perspectives of Lia herself, her daughter Iris and the (callous? Cynical? Caring…?) voice of the disease itself, we follow her life after a diagnosis of terminal cancer. A coming of age story, at the end of a life.
What it meant to me: As a cancer-survivor myself, and having lost a parental figure to cancer, I can confidently say that this is my personal favourite book on the topic out there. Holding the middle between prose and poetry, this stunning novel's triple perspective of mother, daughter and the disembodied voice of "cancer itself" worked its way under my skin and straight to my heart. Apart from the quality of the book itself, I will never forget the timing of first reading this book: during my first weeks of working as an MD in Oncology. This book was the ceremonial bow that tied that circle of my life closed.
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro Genre: literary fiction
One line synopsis: A dystopian classic about three friends growing up in an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. As any child would, they accept the comings and goings at the grounds as just another part of normal life. It isn't until later, looking back as adults, that the three friends realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.
What it meant to me: there's no way to talk about this book's personal meaning without spoiling plotpoints. Yet even if you know the "twist", you might be wondering why I related it to my experience with illness and disability so much. In vague and spoiler-free terms: Never Let me Go was the first and most powerful book to resonate with me on a feeling of realising your own mortality, and moving forwards with that notion. The characters in this book live with an expiration-date, unshakingly and unfairly present since childhood. They live in a perpetual cycle of loss, marching towards an inevitable end. And yet they live and love every miniscule moment to its fullest. These characters, this story and the line "We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived through, or feel we've had enough time.” have been forever tattooed on my soul since I read this book, as the ultimate description of what it's like to know your life has an expiration-date to it.
This Appearing House - Ally Malinenko Genre: middle grade horror
One line synopsis: Shortly before the five-year anniversary of her cancer diagnosis, 12-year old Jac discovers a house at the dead end of her street that wasn't there before. As she enters and explores the house, joined by her best friend, she soon begins to suspect that it wasn't a coincidence that the house showed up where and when it did. Instead: it has a haunting message specifically for her...
What it meant to me: Books about childhood cancer are rare, let alone books that portray a child surviving cancer, without being paraded around as an inspirational hero for others to gawk at. As someone who's experienced childhood cancer and the lingering uncertainty that follows a "NED"-verdict, I wish this book had been around when I needed it. Even retrospectively though, I can say this book helped me feel seen in the metaphorical haunting that cancer brought to my childhood.
When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi Genre: memoir
One line synopsis: At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. In his memoir, Kalanithi documents his experiences with the medical field, "from both sides", as well as tackeling the large questions of what really matters in the end.
What it meant to me: there are a million "cancer-memoirs" out there, yet this one remains my favourite to date. Not only is Kalanithi a brilliant man and a talented writer, he also offers a perspective that I personally relate to, if "in reverse". Kalanithi and I both saw the medical field both from the perspective of the doctor, as well as the patient. Where Kalanithi went from "naieve medical student" (his words, not mine) to terminal patient, I became a doctor after my own close-call with death due to cancer. This strange mirror makes, combined with Kalanithi's eloquent descriptions of universal experiences for every doctor ánd patient, make this an extra powerful memoir that I will treasure forever.
Genre: memoir
One line synopsis: A memoir-in-essays from Rebekah Taussig, who grew up paralyzed due to childhood illness, that chronicles her time from a disabled kid during the 90's to disabled motherhood currently.
What it meant to me: this book resonated with me on multiple levels. Not only from the point of view of someone with a disability myself, but also the child of a full-time wheelchair-using mother. Rebekkah Taussig's writing, both in this book and on her social media @sitting_pretty resonate with me in a particularly powerful way. Specifically her writing about life as a disabled mother always make me feel a little closer to my own mother as well.
Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer Genre: sci-fi horror
One line synopsis: Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; the second expedition ended in mass suicide, the third in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within weeks, all had died of cancer. In Annihilation, the first volume of Jeff VanderMeer's Southern Reach Trilogy, we join the twelfth expedition...
What it meant to me: I fully realise this book is an odd duck among the bunch. Annihilation has nothing to do with disability or illness. And yet it (unintentionally?) did something for me that no other book ever did before or after. Although I usually focus on the more positive side of things, my personal experiences with cancer were everything but that. Most of my childhood memories of that time live in an inchoate, almost liminal space of dread, fear and horror that defies words. No piece of fiction has ever come closer to depicting that wordless terror than Annihilation. This includes both the book as well as the movie-adaptation, which is quite different but happens to lean even more into a cancer-metaphor.
I can't guarantee anyone will have the same experience with this book that I had, and I don't even think the author intended for any of this. That doesn't take away from my personal love for what this book did for me: reading this (over and over) was a katharsis unlike any other. Sometimes we need fiction to tell the truth that we cannot voice otherwise...
Adult Fiction
1. Where the Forest Meets the Stars – Glendy Vanderah representation: breastcancer (protagonist)
2. Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies – Maddie Mortimer representation: cancer (protagonist)
3. The Renovation – Kenan Orhan representation: Alzheimers disease (father of protagonist)
4. Elena Knows – Claudia Pineiro representation: Parkinsons, dementia (protagonist)
5. The Tidal Zone – Sarah Moss representation: life-threatening allergies/anaphylaxix (daughter of protagonist)
6. The Unseen World – Liz Moore representation: Alzheimers (father of protagonist)
7. Unlikely Animals - Annie Hartnett representation: Alzheimers (father of protagonist)
8. Burntcoat – Sarah Hall representation: post-viral illness, coded to be similar to (long)-COVID (protagonist) note: explicit sexual content
9. Small Rain - Gareth Greenwell representation: prolonged ICU-stay and recovery after aortic dissection
10. Body Friend – Katherine Brabon representation: hip-dysplasia, arthrosis, chronic pain, hip-surgery-recovery
Hunchback - Saou Ichikawa representation: congenital myopathie, full-time wheelchair-use, paralysis note: explicit sexual content
12. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Gabriella Zevlin representation: chronic pain after car-accident (protagonist)
13. Out on a Limb - Hannah Bonam-Young representation: amputation/limb-difference (protagonist and love-interest)
14. Nobody's Empire - Stuart Murdoch representation: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME
15. Uncontrollable – Sara Staggs representation: epilepsy
16. What Willow Says – Lynn Buckle representation: deafness/hearingloss (protagonist's daughter), use of sign language
The Music of Bees - Eileen Garvin representation: paralysis, full-time wheelchair use (protagonist)
Available in Dutch only:
Welkom in het Rijk der Zieken - Hanna Bervoets representation: Q-fever, chronic pain, chronic fatigue syndrome
Fantasy, Sci-fi and Magical-Realism
1. Between Earth and Sky Trilogy – Rebecca Roanhorse genre: fantasy representation: blindness (one of the protagonists)
2. Six of Crows & Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo genre: (YA) fantasy representation: chronic pain, main character walks with cane
3. The Spear Cuts Through Water – Simon Jimenez genre: adult fantasy representation: amputation/limb-differences
4. Shark Heart - Emily Habeck genre: literary/magical realism representation: fictional neurodegenerative illness.
5. Our Hideous Progeny - C.E. McGill genre: historical science-fiction, Frankenstein-retelling representation: unspecified chronic illness, likely post-viral, although not recognized in historical setting. (side-character)
6. The Gray House - Mariam Petrosyan genre: (YA-) fantasy representation: limb-difference, wheelchair use, blindness, various other disabilities.
7. Never the Wind – Francesco Dimitri genre: fantasy representation: blindness/vision loss (retinitis pigmentosa), protagonist.
8. The Gracekeepers & The Gloaming – Kirsty Logan genre: fantasy representation: facial disfigurement, limb differences
9. The Beginning of the World in the Middle of the Night – Jen Campbell genre: magical realism short-stories representation: various disabilities and limb-differences. Own-voice. Note: all of Jen Campbells other books and poetry share similar themes of
disability and chronic illness, all written from an own voice perspective.
10. The Diviners - Libba Bray genre: YA fantasy representation: post-polio paralysis (one of the protagonists)
11. Death of the Author – Nnedi Okorofor genre: sci-fi representation: paralysis, full-time wheelchair-use note: trope of "magical-healing" is used, but also critiqued on page.
12. Beings – Ilana Masad genre: sci-fi representation: unnamed chronic illness & chronic pain (protagonist)
13. Where I'd Watch Plastic Trees Not Grow – Hannah Hodgson genre: poetry, magical realism. representation: chronic illness in general, no specific diagnosis mentioned
Physical Magic - William C. Tracy
genre: fantasy
representation: limb-difference
Horror & Thriller
Please consider looking up trigger-warnings before going into any of these!
1. Nestlings – Nat Cassidy representation: paralysis, full-time wheelchair use
2. Sorrowland – Rivers Solomon representation: albinism, vision-loss
3. All’s Well – Mona Awad representation: chronic pain, back-injury, protagonist uses cane.
4. The Empusium - Olga Tokarczuk representation: tuberculosis, bodily differences in general (heavy spoilers), medical misogyny.
5. Lean Fall Stand – John McGregor representation: stroke, aphasia
6. Monstrum - Lottie Mills genre: short-stories representation: various bodily differences/chronic illness
7. We Spread – Iain Reid representation: dementia, age-related physical decline
8. The Sundowners Dance – Todd Keisling representation: dementia, age-related physical decline
9. House of Glass – Susan Fletcher representation: osteogenesis imperfecta (protagonist)
10. Where I End – Sophie White representation: caring for a bedbound parent due to unnamed illness
Non-Fiction & Memoirs
1. Some of Us Just Fall – Polly Atkin representation: Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Hemochromatosis
2. When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi representation: lung cancer (terminal)
3. Between Two Kingdoms – Suleika Jaouad representation: cancer (leukemia)- survivorship
4. Sitting Pretty – Rebekah Taussig representation: paralysis due to childhood cancer, wheelchair use.
5. Below the Edge of Darkness – Edith Widder representation: progressive vision-loss/blindness
6. The Bright Hour – Nina Riggs representation: breast cancer (terminal)
7. Constellations – Sinéad Gleeson representation: acute leukemia, chronic illness, long-term effects of cancer- treatment.
8. I Am, I Am I Am – Maggie O’Farrell representation: acute encephalitis, chronic illness
9. A Face For Picasso – Ariel Henley representation: Crouzon syndrome, facial differences
10. Easy Beauty – Chloe Cooper Jones representation: sacral agenesis, chronic pain, visible disability/limbdifference.
11. It’s Just Nerves – Kelly Davio representation: myasthenia gravis, paralysis
12. The Salt Path – Raynor Winn representation: Cortico-Basal Degeneration (partner of author)
13. The Archeology of Loss - Sarah Tarlow representation: undiagnosed terminal neurodegenerative illness (partner of author)
14. Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved – Kate Bowler representation: colon cancer (terminal)
15. Moving Mountains: Writing Nature through Illness and Disability – Louise Kenward representation: collected own-voice essays on various chronic illnesses
16. Sea Bean – Sally Huband representation: post-pregnancy chronic pain
17. Disfigured; on Fairytales, Disability and Making Space – Amanda LeDuc representation: visible disability, disfigurement, limb-differences.
Body Weather; Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene – Lorraine Boissoneault representation: various chronic illnesses
Owning It - Jen Campbell representation: various chronic illnesses and disabilities in childhood
We've Got This; Stories by Disabled Parents - Eliza Hull representation: various chronic illnesses and disabilities in parenthood
Memento Mori - Tiitu Takalo representation: subarachnoid hemorrage Note: this is a graphic memoir
Available in Dutch only:
Op een Andere Planeet Kunnen ze me Redden - Lieke Marsman representation: cancer (sarcoma)
Handicap; een Bevrijding - Anais van Ertvelde representation: limb-difference
Young Adult Fiction
1. Where Do You See Yourself – Claire Forrest genre: contemporary representation: cerebral palsy + college life in wheelchair
genre: YA fantasy representation: post-polio paralysis (one of the protagonists)
3. Sixteen Souls – Rosie Talbot
4. Breathe and Count Back from Ten - Natalia Sylvester genre: contemporary
representation: hip-dysplasia, chronic pain own-voices
5. Cursed - Karol Ruth Silverstein genre: contemporary representation: Juvenile arthritis
6. Magonia – Maria Dahvana Headley genre: fantasy representation: unnamed pulmonary illness
7. Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses – Kristen O’Neal genre: magical realism contemporary representation: various chronic illnesses, own-voices
8. Breathing Underwater - Abbey Lee Nash genre: contemporary representation: epilepsy
9. One Word Kill – Mark Lawrence genre: fantasy/sci-fi representation: cancer
Wild and Crooked - Leah Thomas genre: contemporary, mystery representation: cerebral palsy
Drömfrangil - Cynthia McDonald genre: fantasy representation: main character is an amputee
Middle-grade and Childrens Fiction
1. How To Disappear Completely – Ali Standish genre: contemporary representation: vitiligo (protagonist)
2. This Appearing House - Ally Malinenko genre: horror representation: childhood cancer (main character is a survivor)
3. The Secret of Haven Point - Lisette Auton Genre: fantasy Representation: various disabilies (including audio-visual impairments, wheelchair use, facial disfigurement and agoraphobia)
4. Not Quite A Ghost - Anne Ursu genre: haunted house horror representation: post-infectious illness, mentions of Long-COVID
5. Kleine Sofie en Lange Wapper - Els Pelgrom (translated as Little Sophie and Lanky Flop) genre: magical realism representation: childhood cancer (protagonist)
6. Song for a Whale – Lynne Kelly genre: contemporary representation: deafness/hearing loss (protagonist)
7. The Girl from Earth's End - Tara Dairman genre: fantasy representation: wheelchair use (one of the main characters), parent with
terminal illness
8. The Island at the End of Everything - Kiran Millwood Hargrave genre: historical fiction representation: leprosy
9. The In-Between – Rebecca Ansari genre: mystery/fantasy representation: type 1 Diabetes (one of the main characters)
10. Accidental Demons – Clare Edge genre: fantasy with light horror elements representation: type 1 Diabetes (main character)
11. Farther than the Moon – Lindsay Lackey genre: contemporary representation: cerebral palsy (brother of protagonist)
12. The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree – Paola Peretti genre: contemporary representation: Stargardts Disease, blindless/vision-loss
13. What Stars are Made of – Sarah Allen genre: contemporary representation: Turner Syndrome (protagonist), own voice
14. Hour of the Bees – Lindsay Eagar genre: magical realism representation: Alzheimer (grandfather of protagonist)
See also Caregiving in Fiction: recommendations with a focus on the perspective of taking care of a loved one with chronic illness/disability.
A part three, focussing on mental health specifically, is in the making.
Missing any obvious candidates (like The Fault in Our Stars, just to name one...)? I might have left them out intentionally, because I don't recommend them. I used to have a specific list of anti-recommendations on the topic too, but I decided to only highlight the good, and not grace the bad with any more attention than necessary.
That being said, I might just not have read your favourite piece of disbility-fiction yet. This list is an ongoing work-in-progress, and I'm always on the hunt for more great titles to add to them . If you have any recommendations for books that would foot that bill: feel free to send me a message via my site, my goodreads or my email (fictionfoxreviews@gmail.com).
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