Summary: We’re delighted to host Alex Pheby to read from his historical “neuronovel” Playthings currently shortlisted for the prestigious Wellcome Book Prize. Paul Schreber is a man who wants to go home – but can’t. He is a man crippled by an illness he doesn’t understand – and sometimes doesn’t even know he has. He's no condition to face the worst - but the worst keeps on happening to him. His family is disintegrating, past traumas are coming back to haunt him - and so are those troubling, seemingly laid-to-rest fears of persecution… Paul Schreber is paranoid - and they really are out to get him. Playthings, Alex Pheby's astonishing second novel, delves deep into a disturbed mind - and in doing so, also unearths the roots of the great ills in the twentieth century, the psychological structure of fascism, the cancer of anti-Semitism, and the abuse of institutional power. Based on the true story of a man who became a case study for Freud and a foundation stone in the psychological make-up of the twentieth century, Playthings is an intense and poetic exploration about what it means to be human. It will shake you to the bone.
