Umbrella - Softcover

Self, Will

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408841215 ISBN 13: 9781408841211

Publisher: Bloomsbury, 2013

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012, Umbrella is Will Self's most extravagant and imaginative exercise in speculative fiction to date. Could modernity be an illness? Umbrella follows the story of Audrey Death, who fell victim to the encephalitis lethargica, sleeping sickness epidemic at the end of the First World War and has been in a coma ever since. Arriving at the asylum she still lingers in, maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner becomes involved in an attempt to bring her back to life - with wholly unforeseen consequences.

About this title

About the Author:

Will Self is the author of six short-story collections, a book of novellas, eight novels, and six collections of journalism. He lives in London.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* This demanding but rewarding latest effort from Self takes place in an English mental hospital in 1971 and, through a longtime and nearly catatonic patient there, in the WWI era of her youth. The shifting perspectives are those of psychiatrist Zachary Busner, a recurring character in Self’s fiction—who may remind the reader (perhaps too much) of the Oliver Sacks of Awakenings or of R. D. Laing—and patient Audrey Dearth (or De’ath, or Death). Newly arrived at the facility, Busner rejects the facile diagnosis of mental illness that generations of professionals have attached to patients, including Dearth, whose physical symptoms he believes may be manifestations of a treatable medical condition rather than psychiatric in origin. The misdiagnoses of his predecessors have had profound consequences; Dearth has been institutionalized for a half-century. As she responds to medication, it becomes clear that she has been conscious and aware much of that time, and, now again articulate, she reveals a horrific family drama dating back to The Great War. Joycean in its rhythm and style, Umbrella lacks chapter breaks, and its paragraphs frequently run to several pages. This is not an easy read, but it is a major and unforgettable one. The English edition was short-listed for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, and, with it, the prolific maverick Self may have written his best book yet and may gain well-merited recognition. --Mark Levine

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408841215
• ISBN 13: 9781408841211
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416