The Rack

A young English student, Paul, is sent to a Swiss sanatorium just after the end of the second world war. At a time when effective medication for tuberculosis was unknown, Paul undergoes an unimaginable regime of regimented medical intervention, both physical and mental. His fellow patients fare no better. Yet, as the poet Edwin Muir wrote in his original review in the Observer: 'The Rack does not deal obviously with disease and suffering; it describes, sometimes very amusingly, the life of the sanatorium: the sardonic professional kindness of the doctors, liable suddenly to break under pressure, the badness of the food, the endless pre-occupation of the patients with their symptoms, and the sexual promiscuity... Behind the book one has the impression of an unusual and powerful mind.' Graham Greene considered it a masterpiece; the Times Literary Supplement believed 'the book exercises a complete fascination...a deeply impressive performance', and Time and Tide hailed 'The Rack' as '...terrific. To read it is itself an experience.' Long out of print, the original Heinemann and Penguin editions cut out some 60,000 words of the author's original text. This Zephyr edition is a restoration of the text and provides today's reader with a chance to discover the definitive edition of one of the great English novels of the last century.

There are certain books which we call great for want of a better term, that rise like monuments above the cemeteries of literature: - 'The Rack', to my mind is one of this company. Graham Greene; Penelope Mortimer wrote: 'It is often glibly said that a work of art is an experience - 'The Rack' is one of the rare instances of this actually being so. It is a book which must, inevitably, have a permanent effect on the reader. In this case the usual terms of praise become almost meaningless. So powerful is Mr Ellis's inspiration, so driven by the urgent necessity of expression, that one is not so much conscious of having read an account of an ordeal as of having lived through two years of unbearable physical and mental agony - and survived.'

A. E. Ellis was the pseudonym of playwright and novelist, Derek Lindsay, who was born in 1920. Orphaned at the age of three, he was brought up by an aunt. After serving in World War II, during which Lindsay rose to become a captain, he returned to England and attended Oxford University.When he was stricken with tuberculosis, Lindsay entered a sanatorium in the Alps, where the years of his slow cure would provide the inspiration for his only published novel, 'The Rack'. The book received great acclaim on its publication.

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