Lieke Marsman's memoir of cancer reaches English readers after her death

Lieke Marsman, the Dutch poet whose memoir follows her life with an incurable cancer, died on 3 June 2026 at the age of 35, according to her publisher, Pluim. Her book, On Another Planet They Can Save Me, is now available in English, and on 21 October 2026 the Guardian published a review headlined "an astonishing memoir of terminal illness."

Marsman was a poet, philosopher and novelist. She served as the Netherlands' poet laureate, an official public role as the country's leading poet for a set term, from 2021 to 2023. She was 27 in 2018 when she was diagnosed with a rare and incurable form of cartilage cancer. Cartilage is the firm, springy tissue that cushions joints. Her treatments included an operation to remove her arm and shoulder, and immunotherapy, a treatment that helps the body's own immune system fight disease.

The memoir began in Dutch as Op een andere planeet kunnen ze me redden, published by Pluim in 2024 and running to 200 pages, according to the Dutch Letterenfonds. The English version was translated by Sophie Collins. The UK publisher Daunt describes it as a memoir in which Marsman, facing a terminal diagnosis, sets out on an intellectual journey that tests the limits of a rational, secular worldview. "Secular" means a view of life that does not rest on religious belief.

In the United States, Catapult publishes the book as On Another Planet They Can Save Me: A Memoir, priced at $26 with 176 pages, according to Publishers Weekly. In the UK, the Observer named the Daunt paperback its "Paperback of the week" in September, listing the price at £11.99.

Readers should not confuse this with an earlier Marsman title. The Guardian reviewed The Opposite of a Person on 8 May 2022, a different book set in the Italian Alps and focused on climate change.

For English-language readers, the book's path is a long one. It was written in Dutch, translated by one person, and released by two publishers in two markets, the UK and the US, with prices in pounds and dollars. Each step required someone to decide the book was worth the cost of the work. The result is a memoir that now sits on shelves in both countries, written by a poet who did not live to see her own book read this widely.