'I read this book in a single addictive sitting. It will stay with me for a long time' Jeet Thayil 'Paralkar has created my favorite kind of story: morbid, magical, and enthralling' Sarah Blake As dusk approaches, a former surgeon goes about closing up his dilapidated clinic in rural India. His day, like all his days, has been long and hard. His medical supplies arrive late if at all, the electrics in the clinic threaten to burn out at any minute, and his overseer, a corrupt government official, blackmails and extorts him. It is thankless work, but the surgeon has long given up any hope...

The legendary Encyclopedia of Medicine is a dizzying collection of maladies: an amnesia that causes everyone youve 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 youor after? The Afflictions is a magical compendium of pseudo-diseases, an encyclopedia of archaic medicine written by a contemporary physician and scientist....