The Best Medicine: Stories of Healing

Hardback

Main Details

Title The Best Medicine: Stories of Healing
Authors and Contributors      Edited by Theo Dalrymple
SeriesEveryman's Library POCKET CLASSICS
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:512
Dimensions(mm): Height 189,Width 124
Category/GenreShort stories
ISBN/Barcode 9781841596297
ClassificationsDewey:808.831083561
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Everyman
Imprint Everyman's Library
Publication Date 1 April 2021
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

This unique collection of medical stories approaches its theme from many eras and perspectives. Some of the authors included were themselves physicians, notably Chekhov, Conan Doyle, Somerset Maugham and William Carlos Williams. Bulgakov, too, draws on his own experience as a doctor in rural Russia a century ago, while Anna Kavan's story from Asylum Piece, takes a surreal look inside a Swiss psychiatric clinic, and Lorrie Moore's witty, grief-stricken Mother in 'People Like Us Are the Only People Here' examines the feelings of a parent with a child in the Paediatric Oncology war - 'Peed Onk'. Maupassant, Stevenson, Kipling, Conrad, Graham Greene, O. Henry, J. G. Ballard, Robert Heinlein, Dorothy Parker, Jhumpa Lahiri and Alice Munro all feature. Doctors observe patients; patients observe doctors. Nurses go about their important business, not always appreciated. Not quite everyone is healed. The meaning of illness - does it have any? - and of life itself, is called into question - and all in the most entertaining way imaginable.