An Imperial Affliction: A Brief Summary

Hazel Grace Lancaster is an average teen that just so happens to be suffering from cancer and carries around a portable oxygen tank to help her breathing. Her mother has been continuously implying that she is depressed due to Hazel’s lack of social skills and the fact that she spends all day sitting at home doing the same routine every day. Hazel reluctantly attends a cancer patients’ support group just for her mother. During one particular meeting Hazel encounters a boy who catches her eye. She learns his name is Augustus Waters who is there solely to support a common friend of theirs’ Isaac, who has a tumor in one eye and plans to take the other out. When support group ends Augustus approaches Hazel outside complimenting her on her looks. He invites her to come over and while hanging out they discuss experiences with cancer. Hazel tells him how her thyroid cancer spread to her lungs which explains the oxygen tank and Augustus reveals he had osteosarcoma but is free of it when they amputated his leg. Before Hazel leaves his house they exchange each other’s favorite novel. Augustus gives her The Prince of Dawn …show more content…
However the story stops mid sentence which doesn’t give any reader closure on the novel’s characters. After the book was publish Peter Van Houten, the author went off to Amsterdam and never was heard of again. After reading the novel, Augustus shares his thoughts on it with Hazel over the phone and tells her he traced down Peter’s assistant Lidewij and emailed her only to then get a response from Van Houten himself. He shares the email with Hazel. She stumbles upon the many questions she’s been dying to know and emails him in hopes that he’d answer her as well. A few days later when visiting Isaac at the hospital she gets a response from Peter saying he could only answer all her questions in person if she ever finds herself in