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Start giftingThe Thanatos Syndrome
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreWhen Dr. Tom More (of Love in the Ruins) is released on parole from state prison, he returns to Feliciana, Louisiana, the parish where he was born and bred and where he practiced psychiatry before his arrest. Upon arriving, he notices something strange in almost everyone around him: unusual sexual behavior in women patients, a bizarre loss of inhibition, a lack of complexity in speech—even his own wife's extraordinary success at bridge tournaments, during which her mind seems to function like a computer.
With the ingenious help of his attractive cousin, Dr. Lucy Lipscomb, More begins to uncover a criminal experiment to "improve" people's behavior by drugging the local water supply. But beyond this scheme are activities so sinister that even Tom More wouldn't believe them if he hadn't witnessed them with his own eyes.
Walker Percy (1916–1990) was the author of nine books of fiction and nonfiction, including the award-winning The Moviegoer and the New York Times bestsellers The Thanatos Syndrome, Love in the Ruins, and The Second Coming . He is considered one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. He went to medical school, intending to be a psychiatrist, until he had a bout with tuberculosis. He married and converted to Catholicism. He became a writer, and his first novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award and has never been out of print.
David Hilder is a stage, film, and television actor. He has narrated unabridged audiobooks for over eighteen years and has recorded more than two hundred titles, spanning works of fiction and nonfiction.
Reviews
“Spins along at a brisk thriller pace, laced with escapes and chase scenes and risky, ingenious detective work.”
“What a pleasure it is to read a real novel…The Thanatos Syndrome has the ambition and purposefulness to take on the world, to wrestle with its shortcomings, and to celebrate its glories.”
“He is a dazzlingly gifted novelist…Percy stages a lively medical mystery…that no serious reader will want to miss.”
“Shimmers with intelligence and verve…The Thanatos Syndrome is highbrow hilarity all the more discerning for distinguishing its tears behind lots of laughs.”
“There is ample evidence of Percy’s brilliance in The Thanatos Syndrome—the droll Dixie anthropology, the pitch-perfect dialogue, the sheer intelligence everywhere on the page…It is splendidly, uproariously catholic, as well.”
“As usual, Percy’s ear for language—especially the layers of meaning in even the most casual conversation—is superb.”
“In crisp, masterful prose Percy delivers a relentlessly compelling tale.”
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