K-Pax: A Novel - Hardcover

Brewer, Gene

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312118406 ISBN 13: 9780312118402

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1995

Synopsis

When a new patient is brought to a mental institution claiming to be an inhabitant of a planet called K-PAX, the hospital seems just the place for him. Yet, except for certain otherworldly abilities, the "alien," prot, appears to be perfectly sane.
In taped therapy sessions prot is asked about life on K-PAX - its lifestyle, principles, foods, language. Prot paints a consistent and credible portrait of a glorious utopia painfully unlike our own and yet so possible, could we only erase from human nature its greed and cruelty. It becomes easy, even desirable, to believe in prot's identity and homeland.
But prot insists that he must return home. As his announced date of "departure" approaches, staff and patients alike are thrown into turmoil: If he is mad, what will happen when the fateful day arrives? If K-PAX is for real...please, may they come along too?

About this title

About the Author:

Before becoming a novelist, Gene Brewer studied DNA replication and cell division at several major research stations. He is the author of ON A BEAM OF LIGHT, K-PAX II and the forthcoming K-PAX III, published in summer 2002, which will complete the K-PAX trilogy. He lives in New York City.

From AudioFile:

When the story and narrator of an audiobook are good, the listener wants to know the ending. But you can't skip ahead, or you would with K-PAX, Gene Brewer's novel about a psychiatrist's sessions with "prot," a mental patient who claims to have traveled to Earth from the planet K-Pax. Tom Casaletto's narration, particularly his inflections for prot and for Dr. Gene Brewer, is superb. Especially memorable is the derisive tone in which prot speaks about human behavior. Although Dr. Brewer believes prot is mentally ill, he can never explain prot's disappearances, or his ability to diagnose and cure people. Casaletto's tone conveys the psychiatrist's certainty that prot is human, while allowing the story to build to a conclusion that leaves the listener wondering what reality really is. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0312118406
• ISBN 13: 9780312118402
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 231