The Winter Soldier

Description

Vienna, 1914. At the outbreak of war, Lucius Korsak, a Polish medical student, enlists as a doctor in the hope of at last gaining practical experience. Chasing the rapidly moving front, he is finally posted to a remote outpost in the Carpathians, with only a single nurse - Margarete - to assist him. Soon Lucius and Margarete find themselves overwhelmed with desperately wounded soldiers - and while Lucius learns about surgery, he also learns about suffering and love. Then the path of the young doctor's life will change forever, when a man is discovered near the hospital grounds without a mark on him. Uncommunicative and clearly highly troubled, Lazlo Horvath soon begins to express himself through extraordinary drawings, portraying both the horrors of the war around them and those within his own chaotic mind. Years later, Lucius returns to Vienna. His once promising career faltering, he finds employment as a doctor at an overcrowded Mental Asylum outside the city. One day an old mentor tells him about an amazing young woman - Amalia S - who has been committed to another, much more brutal asylum. Soon Lucius too finds himself captivated by the girl's astonishing talent and the doctor conspires to rescue Amalia and take her to his family's own private country home, where she will provide the material for a groundbreaking book - The Dreambook of Amalia S. But as the political situation worsens - and Europe is pulled once again towards war - could Lucius's actions have placed both Amalia - and himself - in terrible danger? Sweeping from 1914 to the 1970s and inspired by an extraordinary true story, THE DREAMBOOK OF AMALIA S. is the incredible new novel from Daniel Mason, the bestselling author of THE PIANO TUNER.

Daniel Mason is a physician and author of the novels The Piano Tuner and A Far Country. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, and adapted for opera and theatre. A recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he is currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University, where he teaches courses in the humanities and medicine. He lives in the Bay Area with his family. The Winter Soldier is his third novel.

Part mystery, part war story, part romance, The Winter Soldier is a dream of a novel - impeccably researched and totally immersive -- Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See One of the finest prose stylists in American fiction * New York Times * Utterly convincing and written with a lyricism that belies the horrors it so unflinchingly describes * Daily Mail * Held me by the throat from the first lyrical page to the last -- Emma Donoghue A powerful tale * Sunday Times * A tour-de-force. I was immersed in the grandeur of Imperial Vienna and the frozen battlefields of the Eastern Front -- Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone So real, so rich and detailed, that the room in which I was reading vanished -- Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less and The Story of a Marriage One of the best books I've ever read -- Elizabeth MacNeal, author of The Doll Factory Captivating . . . A novel to get lost in * Herald * A powerful tale of a medical student in the First World War * Sunday Times Culture * A touching, intensely human story of longing and love -- Georgia Hunter, author of We Were The Lucky Ones