The Listener

The hospital was more like a mansion than an asylum-elegant hallways filled with manservants, vaulted ceilings, vast windows, and a magnificent expanse of ground that made the delicate dance between patients and those who treat them seem effortless. But, at the end of World War II a patient arrives that throws this careful architecture into chaos.In Bertram Reiner-charismatic, brilliant, and diagnosed with a severe case of Battle Fatigue-Dr. Harrison, the distinguished and steadfast...
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The hospital was more like a mansion than an asylum-elegant hallways filled with manservants, vaulted ceilings, vast windows, and a magnificent expanse of ground that made the delicate dance between patients and those who treat them seem effortless. But, at the end of World War II a patient arrives that throws this careful architecture into chaos.In Bertram Reiner-charismatic, brilliant, and diagnosed with a severe case of Battle Fatigue-Dr. Harrison, the distinguished and steadfast head of the hospital, finds the most challenging patient of his career. Their sessions leave Dr. Harrison slipping into a frightening, but also strangely enlivening twilight existence that renders the boundaries between sanity and insanity disquietingly blurred. When Dr. Harrison discovers that Bertram is having an affair with Matilda, the head nurse, who he himself has feelings for, his own state of yearning rises and throws his sanity into the balance. Shira Nayman's mesmerising storytelling is relentless and thrilling. A riveting tale of madness and passion, with taught sentences, startling revelations and eerie wisdom. The Listener excavates the dark corners of the human heart and mind. it is a work of rare depth and power.