The Rack

Published under a pseudonym, A E Ellis, and appearing in 1958 to considerable acclaim, The Rack is a novel about the ordeal of being deathly ill.
A young English student, Paul, is sent to a Swiss sanatorium just after the end of the second world war. At a time when effective medication for tuberculosis was unknown, Paul undergoes an unimaginable regime of regimented medical intervention, both physical and mental. His fellow patients fare no better. Yet, as the poet Edwin Muir wrote in his original review in the Observer: 'The Rack does not deal obviously with disease and suffering; it describes, sometimes very amusingly, the life of the sanatorium: the sardonic professional kindness of the doctors, liable suddenly to break under pressure, the badness of the food, the endless pre-occupation of the patients with their symptoms, and the sexual promiscuity. Behind the book one has the impression of an unusual and powerful mind.' Graham Greene considered it a masterpiece; the Times Literary Supplement believed 'the book exercises a complete fascination.a deeply impressive performance', and Time and Tide hailed 'The Rack' as '.terrific. To read it is itself an experience.' Long out of print, the original Heinemann and Penguin editions cut out some 60,000 words of the author's original text. This Zephyr edition is a restoration of the text and provides today's reader with a chance to discover the definitive edition of one of the great English novels of the last century.

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