The Doctor Is Sick

"Fine, sly, rich comedy." -New York Times Book Review

Dr. Edwin Spindrift, a very ordinary lecturer in linguistics, has been sent home from Burma with a brain tumor. Closer to words than people, his sense of reality is further altered by his condition. The night before he is to be operated on, Spindrift decides-shaven-headed, shirtless, and penniless-to postpone the surgery by escaping from the hospital. Things and people he hardly knew existed outside of his dictionaries swoop down on him a...