title: The Sickness
author: Alberto Barrera Tyszka
description: <div>"[I]n 'The Sickness' Mr. Tyszka confronts 'illness's infinite power' in its corporal and psychosomatic forms. The strength of this bold and devastating book (translated by the always dependable Margaret Jull Costa) is that the author neither moralizes about sickness nor uses it as a metaphor. It is simply there, its meaning altogether inexplicable." &#151;<I>Wall Street Journal</I><BR><BR>"This is great book by a great writer."<BR>&#151;Chris Adrian, author of <I>The Great Night</I><BR><BR>"Barrera Tyszka not only presents the would be medicine with confident realism, creates sympathetic characters and writes gorgeous prose, he's also a thinker and peppers his narrative with meditations on illness, the complications of lying, and the nature of physical pain."<BR>&#151;<I>Shelf Awareness</I><BR><BR>"Tyszka's novel does not belabor the moral ambiguities of illness but draws them with clean, scalpel-sharp precision."<BR>&#151;<I>Booklist</I><BR><BR>"<I>The Sickness</I> is refreshingly clean in its storytelling yet very complex in character."<BR>&#151;<I>Times Literary Supplement</I><BR><BR>"Alberto Barrera Tyszka distills an eerie fableof identity from a hypochondriac's psycho-drama and a looming family crisis."<BR>&#151;The <I>Independent</I><BR><BR>"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."<BR>&#151;Eileen Battersby, <I>The Irish Times</I><BR><BR>"Powerful writing [which does] not let you off or let you down."<BR>&#151;<I>The Lady</I><BR><BR>"Well-pitched, gentle and suggestive . . . philosophy in the story."<BR>&#151;<I>Skinny</I><BR></div>
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  ![001](images/00001.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Table of Contents
  
  
    
  
  
  [Praise](index_split_002.html#filepos966)
  
  
  [Title Page](index_split_000.html#filepos176)
  
  
  [Introduction](index_split_003.html#filepos2589)
  
  
    
  
  
  [I](index_split_004.html#filepos9702)
  
  
  [II](index_split_005.html#filepos176801)
  
  
    
  
  
  [Copyright Page](index_split_008.html#filepos307878)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Praise for
  
  
  The Sickness
  
  
  “Driven by an urgent narrative pulse and a great fluency of style . . . [The
  Sickness] will touch the heart of many readers for its sensitive and balanced
  exposition of the fundamental problems of the human condition.”
  
  
  —ANGEL BASANTA , El Mundo
  
  
    
  
  “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
  
  
    
  
  “A delicate piece of craftsmanship . . . A small great work.”
  
  
  —JUAN CARLOS PALMA, Mercurio
  
  
    
  
  “This is a s