Book details

Bedlam

A Novel of Love and Madness

Author: Greg Hollingshead

Bedlam

Bedlam

$27.00

About This Book

An extraordinary novel of three people caught up in the turmoil of the late eighteenth century, their lives intertwined in an age of war and revolution.
Page Count
400
On Sale
10/30/2007

Book Details

An International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Nominee

A Toronto Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year

Conspiracies, plots, and paranoia are sweeping through London in the last days of the eighteenth century, and James Tilly Matthews has been caught under false pretenses and locked up in the city's vast, crumbling asylum. As his wife, Margaret, tries desperately to free him, political forces conspire to keep him locked up. Margaret's chief adversary is John Haslam, the asylum's chief apothecary, a man torn between his conscience and the lure of scientific discovery: as James becomes more famous--and more unhinged--he becomes a valuable specimen for the young doctor and a pawn in a grand political conspiracy. Based on real characters and events, Bedlam is a brilliant evocation of a city teetering between darkness and light, and a moving study of every kind of madness.

Imprint Publisher

Picador

ISBN

9780312427429

In The News

“Superbly disturbing . . . a profoundly moving examination of both mental and political lunacy.” —The Boston Globe

Bedlam has no end of gorgeous writing . . . elegant, heartfelt . . . filled with rewarding descriptions of a bygone era.” —The New York Times Book Review

“A vivid picture of the grotesque patients and sadistic staff of the 'English Bastille' adds density to the gallows humor that peppers this brutal story.” —Publishers Weekly

“Stylishly written, full of dazzling, epigrammatic insights . . . An intellectual novel, but also a moving story about fully fleshed human beings.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

About the Creators

Bedlam

Bedlam

$27.00