Bloomsbury USA
March 2014
On Sale: March 4, 2014
Featuring: Albert Dadas; Maud Casey
240 pages ISBN: 1620403110 EAN: 9781620403112 Kindle: B00GGKRZF6 Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
In a trance-like state, Albert walksβfrom Bordeaux to Poitiers, from Chaumont to Macon, and farther afield to Turkey, Austria, Russiaβall over Europe. When he walks, he is called a vagrant, a mad man. He is chased out of towns and villages, ridiculed and imprisoned. When the reverie of his walking ends, heβs left wondering where he is, with no memory of how he got there. His past exists only in fleeting images.
In a time when mental health diagnosis is still as much art as science, Maud Casey takes us back to its tentative beginnings and offers us an intimate relationship between one doctor and his patient as, together, they attempt to reassemble a lost life. Through Albert she gives us a portrait of a man untethered from place and time who, in spite of himself, kept setting out, again and again, in search of wonder and astonishment.