21 Days of a Neurasthenic Markus Werner Finding himself raised up from

Finding himself raised up from the loneliness and darkness of what has gone before

CHRISTINE DWYER HICKEY has twice won the Listowel Writers’ Week short story competition and is a prize winner in the Observer/Penguin short story competition

are the pleasures of middle-class life enough to keep one from joining the legions of the damned

a death that his executioners purposely intended to be prolonged and painful

Autoportrait is a physical

21 Days of a Neurasthenic Markus Werner Finding himself raised up fromOctave Mirbeau, author of The Torture Garden and Diary of a Chambermaid, wrote this scathing novel on the cusp of the twentieth century. Driven mad by modern life, Georges Vasseur leaves for a rest cure, where he encounters corrupt politicians, amnesiac coquettes, cheerfully sadistic killers, imperialist generals, and quack psychiatrists. Hypocrites are eternal, and not much has changed since Mirbeau wrote this acid portrait of his era. Octave