An A-Z of His Last Patient - England.
1939. Sigmund Freud has fled from Vienna to London, bringing his famous couch, his collection of tribal totems and his determination to free the subconscious. Accompanied by his faithful biographer and physician, Jones, he ventures out into the city of Virginia Woolf and TS Eliot - of bankers and nudists, soldiers and fortune tellers, waxworks and politicians - where he uncovers a series of shocking secrets . . .
Or does he? Perhaps Freud, in these last days, is only dreaming up possible Londons, each one more insightful and magical than the one before. The city seems happy to prove one thing, but also its opposite. The one certainty is that, in the background, the nation is preparing for its greatest act of rational madness - war.
Jonathan Tel's novel is a small masterpiece: based on the facts of Freud's time in London, it is both a moving evocation of a lost time and a dazzlingly original series of riffs on Freud's ideas. It is the guide to all our dreams, and to the world in which, since Freud, we have all been living.
