Perlman's ordeal
By: Brooks Hansen.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 329
Description: "One evening in London in 1906, Dr. August Perlman - music lover, hashish devotee, and pioneer of "clinical suggestion" - is about to leave for the symphony when a teenage girl is brought to his office. Sylvie Blum is catatonic, unwashed, and dehydrated - and, it seems, another girl's personality is living inside her. Soon a charismatic spiritualist, Madame Helena Barrett, has young Sylvie telling an astonishing story that resembles the myth of Atlantis.

The doctor wants to suppress the story, but the spiritualist is desperate for the story to be told; and so begins a heated battle for the soul of the girl. Meanwhile, Dr. Perlman and Madame Barrett alike are haunted by the ghost of her late brother, Alexander, a composer whose life and work are flawlessly realized."--BOOK JACKET.