The Afflictions, Second Edition
The Afflictions, Second Edition
by Vikram Paralkar
“A haunting take on the ills of flesh and soul.”
—Kirkus Reviews
The legendary Encyclopedia of Medicine is a dizzying collection of maladies: an amnesia that causes everyone you’ve ever met to forget you exist, while you remain perfectly, painfully aware of your history. A wound that grows with each dark thought or evil deed you commit but shrinks with every act of kindness. A disease that causes your body to imitate death, stopping your heart, cooling your blood. Will the fit pass before they bury you—or after?
The Afflictions is a magical compendium of pseudo-diseases, an encyclopedia of archaic medicine written by a contemporary physician and scientist. Little by little, these bizarre and mystical afflictions frame an eternal struggle: between human desire and the limits of bodily existence.
First published in English in the United States, The Afflictions has since been published in Argentina, Italy, and India. This second U.S. edition features the original illustrations created by Pia Valentinis for the Italian language edition.
Photo Credit: Kimberly Kunda
About the Author
Vikram Paralkar was born and raised in Mumbai. Author of two works of fiction, The Afflictions and Night Theatre, he is a physician-scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, where he treats patients with leukemia and researches the disease. His works have been translated into several foreign languages.
Praise for The Afflictions
“Disease is made into something new and strange through the eyes of writer-scientist Vikram Paralkar . . . Paralkar shares with Borges a collector’s delight in details.”
—Brenda Wang, The Believer
“Paralkar’s tragicomic imagination, sly sendup of pseudo-Latinate medical prose and fine sense of irony make for an arresting read . . . A haunting take on the ills of flesh and soul.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The beauty of The Afflictions comes from the fact that it is an unabashedly entertaining narrative that revels in weirdness and impossibility while also packing a much more profound layer in which Paralkar explores the frailty, failures, and absurdity of human nature... Vikram Paralkar is a talented author with a knack for the fantastic. He knows medicine, but it’s his understanding of the relationship between diseases and the human mind and spirit that makes The Afflictions a great read.”
—Gabino Iglesias, Atticus Review
“Beautifully narrated, with Pythagorean prose... Borgesian in style. The sentences are polished till they gleam... The Afflictions is not only the delicious fruit (hilarious at times) of an overflowing imagination but is also filled with erudition. Paralkar trades in philosophy, history, anthropology, and theology, among other disciplines... This is a book to devour with relish.”
—Guillermo Belcore, La Prensa
