Dannie Abse relates the haunting tale of Dr Simmonds - a man disfigured in a childhood accident whose heart is scarred by unacknowledged monsters.

In London’s Swiss Cottage a general practitioner, Dr Simmonds, finds himself irresistibly drawn into an increasingly disturbing fantasy life by the young wife of one of his more (to him) execrable patients. When she presents him with a copy of a novel in which a doctor colludes with a patient to murder her husband, the boundaries between reality and fantasy begin to blur and he sets out on a course that withholds its full horror until the very end.

Longlisted
The Man Booker Prize 2002
Published by
Robson Books
Publication date
Dannie Abse

Dannie Abse

About the Author

Dannie Abse was longlisted for his fifth and last novel. The author put his own experiences as a doctor into his disturbing tale of a physician struggling with murderous urges.
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