DOCTOR OLAF VAN SCHULER’S BRAIN
Book ID/图书代码： 14560008B24098
English Summary/英文概要： In 1664 Dr. Olaf van Schuler flees the Old World and arrives in New Amsterdam with his lunatic mother, two bags of medical implements, and a carefully guarded book of his own medicines. He is the first in what will become a long line of peculiar physicians. Plagued by madness and guided by an intense desire to cure human affliction, each generation of this unusual family is driven by the science of its day: spontaneous combustion, phrenology, animal magnetism, electrical shock treatment, psychosurgery, genetic research. As they make their way in the world, New York City, too, evolves—from the dark and rough days of the seventeenth century to the towering, frenetic metropolis of today.
Like Patrick Süskind’s classic novel Perfume, Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s debut is a literary cabinet of curiosities—fascinating and unsettling, rich and utterly singular.
Chinese Summary/中文概要： 1664年，医生奥拉夫•凡•舒勒带着他的精神病母亲离开荷兰，来到了北美的新阿姆斯特丹。他随身携带的只有两袋医疗器材和一本他亲自撰写的医书。他和他的后代成为了一类特殊的医生。由于饱受精神病的折磨，加上治愈人类病痛的强烈欲望，这个不同寻常的家族的每一代人都试图揭开人类大脑的秘密，他们对骨相学、动物磁学、电振疗法、基因学等等都进行了相关的研究。就在他们世代进行研究的同时，纽约市也在演变——从十七世纪的落后地区逐渐变成今天这个高楼林立、节奏飞快的国际大都市。
就像聚斯金德（台译徐四金）的经典小说《香水》，凯尔斯滕•蒙捷尔-安德森的处女作也充满了各种让读者惊奇的元素。凯尔斯滕是一个女作家，她的短篇小说集曾经入围众多文学奖项。
Awards/获奖情况：Review "If I had a talent for fiction, Dr. Olaf Van Schuler’s Brain is the book I’d dream of writing. Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s writing floors me. To read her luminous prose applied to the grotesqueries of the characters is an unforgettable literary experience." –Mary Roach, author of Stiff, Spook, and Bonk “Strange and wonderful, Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain introduces us to the tremendously gifted Kirsten Menger-Anderson, a writer whose subject is nothing less than the diagnosis and cure of the human malady. We follow twelve generations of New York City’s Steenwycks family through their forays into phrenology, mesmerism, radium therapy and similar misadventures, a historically rich narrative that Menger-Anderson delivers in striking, elegant prose and with a sure eye for detail. This is a remarkable debut by a writer to watch.” –Ben Fountain, author of the PEN/Hemingway Award winner and B&N Discover Winner Brief Encounters with Che Guevara "Spellbinding ... this book by the gifted new writer Kirsten Menger-Anderson is like nothing else you’ve every read before. It’s truly original and impossible to put down." —Dr. Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and poet/playwright "This satisfying and wholly original book is a true pleasure to read. In seamless prose, Menger-Anderson captures a panoramic New York spanning five centuries, where surgeons and tavern owners, Macy’s clerks and suffragettes, gangsters and prison reformers all grapple with mysteries of science and of the soul. Menger-Anderson navigates her terrain with self-assured ease, and each story informs the others so that the sum is truly greater than its parts." –Daphne Kalotay, author of Calamity and Other Stories And of course the PW review!: Menger-Anderson’s vivid and original collection follows several generations of New York doctors and charts the social and political forces that shaped New York City from the 17th century to today. Dr. Olaf van Schuler emigrates from Holland to New Amsterdam in 1664 and continues his study of animal brains. After he has a child by Adalind Steenwycks, each subsequent generation spins out in its own story, concluding with Dr. Elizabeth Steenwycks, the medical researcher daughter of Dr. Stuart Steenwycks, a plastic surgeon dying of a rare and fatal brain malady. Each generation applies the then current medical wisdom to tasks as varied as explaining a death by spontaneous combustion, resuscitating a boy’s corpse and using phrenology to predict human behavior. In the early 1970s, Americans’ obsession with their body image arises in the woeful tale of Sheila Talbot, 21, whose leaky breast implants hark back to the less-than-helpful medicine practiced in previous generations. The reader can follow how far medicine has advanced, but, surprisingly, note how human suffering and misery hasn’t come such a long way. ... and you can see the great jacket on Kirsten’s site:
http://www.kirstenmengeranderson.com/.
About the Author/作者介绍： Kirsten Menger-Anderson’s stories have been short-listed for the Andre Dubus Award, the Richard Yates Award, the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, and the Iowa Review story contest and have appeared in a number of literary publications. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and baby.
Format:HARDCOVER
Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE
Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE
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