Asylum: Patrick McGrath (Penguin Essentials, 51) - Softcover

A story of self-obsession narrated by the point of view of a psychiatrist, published as a Penguin Essential for the first time.

As a psychiatrist in a top-security mental hospital in the 1950s, Peter Cleave has made a study of what he calls 'the catastrophic love affair characterized by sexual obsession.' His experience is extensive, and he is never surprised. Until, that is, he comes reluctantly to accept that the wife of one of his colleagues has embarked on such an affair...

'This is a desolate sort of place, though god knows it's had the best years of my life. It is maximum security, a walled city that rises from a high ridge to dominate the surrounding country . . .'

Summer, 1959, and Max Raphael is appointed deputy superintendent of an isolated hospital for the criminally insane. When Max decides to have his lodging's Victorian conservatory restored it is a patient, Edgar Stark, who comes to do the work.

And there Max's beautiful and lonely wife Stella first befriends Edgar and later becomes his lover. But as their secret affair becomes ever more obsessive so their love threatens to destroy everything it touches . . .

'Authentically tragic, unforgettable' Daily Telegraph