| Description |
437 pages ; 24 cm |
| Summary |
"Island of the Mad follows the solitary, hunchbacked Ambrose A., as he sets out on a mysterious journey to Venice in search of a lost notebook he knows almost nothing about. Eventually he arrives in San Servolo, the Island of the Mad, in the Venetian Lagoon, only a few minutes' boat-ride from Venice. At the island's old, abandoned hospital which has been turned into a conference center, he discovers a mess of papers in a drawer, and among them the correspondence and notes of two of the island's former inhabitants-a woman with a rare genetic illness which causes the afflicted to gradually become unable to sleep until, increasingly hallucinatory and feverish, they essentially die of sleeplessness; and her friend, a man who experiences epileptic seizures. As the sleepless woman's eyesight fails, she wants only one thing-that her friend read to her from Dostoevsky's great novel, The Idiot, a book she loves but can no longer read herself. As Ambrose follows their strange tale, everything he has ever known or thought is called into question."-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 433-437). |
| Subject |
San Servolo Island (Italy) -- Fiction.
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Quests (Expeditions) -- Fiction.
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Hospital patients -- Fiction.
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Sanatoriums -- Fiction.
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FICTION -- Literary.
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Hospital patients. (OCoLC)fst00961005
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Quests (Expeditions) (OCoLC)fst01085708
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Sanatoriums. (OCoLC)fst01104775
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Italy -- San Servolo Island.
(OCoLC)fst01306561
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| Genre/Form |
Fiction. (OCoLC)fst01423787
|
| ISBN |
9781619028357 hardcover |
|
1619028352 hardcover |
|
