Umbrella
By: Will Self
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2013
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
ISBN-13: 9781408831670
Subjects: Patients; Complications; Treatment; Coma; Epidemic encephalitis; Psychiatrists; Fiction
Description: Recently having abandoned his R.D. Laing-influenced experiment in running a therapeutic community -- the so-called Concept House in Willesden -- maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner arrives at Friern Hospital, a vast Victorian mental asylum in North London, under a professional and marital cloud. He has every intention of avoiding controversy, but then he encounters Audrey Death, a working-class girl from Fulham born in 1890 who has been immured in Friern for decades. A socialist, a feminist and a munitions worker at the Woolwich Arsenal, Audrey 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. Realising that Audrey is just one of a number of post-encephalitics scattered throughout the asylum, Busner becomes involved in an attempt to bring them back to life -- with wholly unforeseen consequences.
Notes: Originally published: 2012.

Man Booker Prize for Fiction Shortlist, 2012.