''The Doctor Is Sick'' is a 1960 novel by

Anthony Burgess John Anthony Burgess Wilson, (; 25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993), who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer and composer. Although Burgess was primarily a comic writer, his dystopian satire ''A Clockwork ...

. According to his autobiography, Burgess composed the book in just six weeks. He wrote it after his return to England from

Brunei Brunei ( , ), formally Brunei Darussalam ( ms, Negara Brunei Darussalam, Jawi: , ), is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its South China Sea coast, it is completely surrounded by t ...

in a burst of literary activity that also produced '' Devil of a State'', ''

A Clockwork Orange ''A Clockwork Orange'' may refer to: * ''A Clockwork Orange'' (novel), a 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess ** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (film), a 1971 film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel *** ''A Clockwork Orange'' (soundtrack), the film ...

'', '' The Right to an Answer'' and several other works.

Plot introduction

The doctor of the title is Edwin Spindrift, PhD, an unhappily married professor of linguistics who has been sent home from Burma to England suffering from a mysterious brain ailment. While Edwin is confined to a neurological ward, undergoing a battery of diagnostic tests, Mrs Spindrift amuses herself with some disreputable new friends at nearby pubs. Sometimes, to Edwin's distress, she sends these friends to keep her husband company during visiting hours, rather than come herself. Most of the novel is a dream sequence: while he is anaesthetised for brain surgery, Edwin's anxiety over his wife and the company she keeps turns into a fantasy in which Edwin leaves the hospital and encounters his wife's friends, with whom he has various adventures.

Background and sources

Shortly before he wrote ''The Doctor Is Sick'' Burgess suffered an obscure mental breakdown that ended his career as a teacher in the Far East. He came back to Britain convinced that he had a brain tumour. He based some of the events in this novel on his experience of confinement in the Neurological Institute in London. The character Doctor Railton, who is put in charge of Edwin's case, is a fictionalised version of

Sir Roger Bannister Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister (23 March 1929 – 3 March 2018) was an English neurologist and middle-distance athlete who ran the first sub- 4-minute mile. At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Bannister set a British record in the 1500 metres an ...

, who performed neurological tests on Burgess.

References

*Lewis, Roger: ''

'' (London:

Faber & Faber Faber and Faber Limited, usually abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, Margaret Storey, William Golding, Samuel ...

, 2002). {{DEFAULTSORT:Doctor Is Sick, The 1960 British novels Novels by Anthony Burgess Medical novels Heinemann (publisher) books