The last hiccup
Subtitle: a novel
By: Christopher Meades
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9781550229738
Subjects: Hiccups; Physician and patient; Confidential communications; Fiction; Good and evil
Description: Set in 1930s Russia, this darkly humorous, tragic, and ultimately heroic novel tells the tale of Vladimir, an eight-year-old Russian boy suddenly stricken with a chronic case of the hiccups. He soon finds himself spirited away to a Moscow hospital by the famous physician Sergei Namestikov, who puts him through a series of extraordinary--and often bizarre--treatments in an effort to find a cure. When Sergei's chief medical rival, the brilliant Alexander Afiniganov, discovers that beneath Vladimir's blank eyes lurks a pure, unbridled evil, he takes steps to remove the child from polite society. Abandoned by everyone but his hiccups, Vladimir decides to return to the world he once knew, encountering many strange people and situations along the way.