The Encyclopaedia Medicine at the Central Library is the repository of a dizzying array of ailments, and Máximo is thrilled to get a peek at the obscure afflictions:
Amnesia that causes everyone you’ve ever met to forget you exist, while you remain painfully aware of your history.
A malady that erodes the link between cause and effect: one man commits a murder, another carries the guilt and a third is sentenced for it. A condition that causes your body to imitate death – stopping your heart, cooling your blood. Will the fit pass before they bury you, or after?
As Máximo soon discovers, the pursuit of knowledge at the Central Library is tangled up with the humor and inclinations of the writers and their times. The Afflictions is the brilliant first novel by physician-scientist Vikram Paralkar, whose The Wounds of the Dead garnered much critical acclaim.
Veiled in a pseudo-medieval setting and a list of surreal illnesses,
the author presents a relatable version of what truly ails us all.
Vikram Paralkar is a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA. He was born and raised in Mumbai, India. His book The Wounds of the Dead was published by HarperCollins India in 2017. The Afflictions has been translated into Spanish and Italian.
The Press Release first appeared in Storizen Magazine December 2018.
