Histories

Olive Kitteridge meets Do No Harm in this revealing and intimate interlinked collection of stories set in a hospital, written by a doctor.

We wear our secrets openly, like diseases.

The messy truth of a hospital is laid bare in this interlinked collection of stories; not just the bleeps, the blood, the battles, but the hearts beating behind them. A junior doctor makes a moral judgment; a porter waxes lyrical on his invisibility; a patient swims in and out of consciousness. Over the course of one week, each character pulses round the others - a body fighting its own sickness.

In prose that's tender and refined, doctor and poet Sam Guglani dissects the ordinary moments that make the difference; taking up that tug of war between medicine and faith, love and fear, life and death.