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  • Published: 2 October 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099578840
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99

The Asylum




I am Miss Georgina Ferrars, of Gresham’s Yard, London. I am. I swear that I am. And I shall prove it.

A young woman wakes in a strange bed.

A sickly light filters through a metal grille.

Doctor Maynard Straker steps into the room, and speaks.

‘Have no fear, Miss Ashton. I am entirely at your service.’

This, however, is not her name.

And she should not be here – in the Asylum.

She is Miss Georgina Ferrars, and she can prove it.

But when Dr Straker sends a telegram to her uncle in London, the reply is swift:

GEORGINA FERRARS HERE STOP
YOUR PATIENT MUST BE IMPOSTER STOP

Madness? Mistaken identity? Or are there more malevolent forces at work?

  • Published: 2 October 2014
  • ISBN: 9780099578840
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 272
  • RRP: $32.99

About the author

John Harwood

John Harwood was born in Hobart, Tasmania. Educated in Tasmania and Cambridge, he went on to become Head of the School of English and Drama at Flinders University, Adelaide. He is the author of two books of criticism, Olivia Shakespear and W. B. Yeats and Eliot to Derrida: The Poverty of Interpretation and the novels The Ghost Writer and The Séance.

Also by John Harwood

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Praise for The Asylum

Harwood has a talent amounting to genius for channeling the spirit of 19th-century sensation fiction

Andrew Taylor, Spectator

Harwood, master of creeping Victorian horror, does it again in his latest tale of pervasive evil and madness

Booklist

Readers are guaranteed a thoroughly diverting time in Harwood’s not-to-be-trusted hands… A dizzying dance…we love every minute of it

Barry Forshaw, Independent

A twisting tale of greed, deceit and betrayal

Daily Telegraph

Deliciously spooky

New York Times Book Review

It is a brilliantly constructed 21st-century take on a 19th-century literary form and a satisfactorily confusing read

Good Book Guide