The Sickness

In this strange, understated yet compelling debut novel, Venezuelan writer Alberto Barrera Tyszka explores the meaning of sickness: physical, mental and social. Dr Andres Miranda, a successful Caracas doctor, is approaching middle age without ever having encountered anything particularly traumatic in his life. He is happily married and secure in his relationship with his father, who apart from a pathological fear of flying seems to share the relative contentment of Miranda's middle-class existence.

However, Andres' life, which he has based on treating the sickness of strangers, quickly begins to unravel when various forms of illness begin to manifest themselves closer to home. His father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and Andres cannot bring himself to tell him the truth; at the same time, he picks up a deranged stalker, a hypochondriac whose increasingly obsessive emails make for uncomfortable reading. Meanwhile, the demands of his father's care force Andres to confront, through the figure of his cleaning lady, the reality of poverty and desperation in the working-class slums of Caracas, and his secretary, taking over the correspondence with the obsessive hypochondriac, becomes fascinated with this strange figure.

Written in direct and lyrical prose, The Sickness 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.