The Sickness

'This is a short, tersely written novel that distances and invades us at the same time. Powerful themes and powerful writing [does] not let you off or let you down' Susan Hill, Lady. * Lady *
'Promises to place Tyszka at the front rank of new Latin American writers, and, in its poignant dissection of middle-class malaise and familial dynamics, establishes him with a claim to be the Venezuelan Ian McEwan' Booktrust Translated Fiction. * Booktrust Translated Fiction *
'powerful first novel ... gracefully examined to sometimes comic, but ultimately deeply moving effect' Good Book Guide. * Good Book Guide *
'As father and son go on holiday, the doctor's secretary has stories of her own to tell - as medicine, memory and fantasy join in a combustible mixture. In this coolly assured translation by Margaret Jull Costa, Tyszka's fable achieves an almost Coetzee-like level of resonant exactitude' Boyd Tonkin, Independent. * Independent *
'Tyszka's great skill is to evoke an emotional response from a series of lightly sketched but nonetheless highly believable epiphanies. Indeed, the characters here only grow through their burgeoning awareness of mortality, something which results in a story which is as true to death as it is to life' Val Nolan, Irish Examiner. * Irish Examiner *
'The Sickness is refreshingly clean in its storytelling yet very complex in character' Anthony Furey, Times Literary Supplement. * Times Literary Supplement *
'Tyszka is a perceptive, original writer. He has brought an unusually sophisticated understanding to a wonderfully intense, little novel. No sentimentality, no polemic, just emotion at its most resonant' Eileen Battersby, Irish Times. * Irish Times *