{"product_id":"9781640090088","title":"Island of the Mad: A Novel","description":"\u003cbr\u003eFollowing on the heels of her exciting and widely acclaimed \u003ci\u003eA Monster’s Notes\u003c\/i\u003e, and with Sheck’s characteristic brilliance of language, \u003ci\u003eIsland of the Mad\u003c\/i\u003e follows the solitary, hunchbacked Ambrose A., as he sets out on a mysterious journey to Venice in search of a lost notebook he knows almost nothing about.\u003cp\u003eEventually he arrives in San Servolo, the Island of the Mad, in the Venetian Lagoon, only a few minutes’ boat-ride from Venice. At the island’s old, abandoned hospital which has been turned into a conference center, he discovers a mess of papers in a drawer, and among them the correspondence and notes of two of the island’s former inhabitants—a woman with a rare genetic illness which causes the afflicted to gradually become unable to sleep until, increasingly hallucinatory and feverish, they essentially die of sleeplessness; and her friend, a man who experiences epileptic seizures. As the sleepless woman’s eyesight fails, she wants only one thing—that her friend read to her from Dostoevsky’s great novel, \u003ci\u003eThe Idiot\u003c\/i\u003e, a book she loves but can no longer read herself. As Ambrose follows their strange tale, everything he has ever known or thought is called into question.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Counterpoint Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47058198429936,"sku":"9781640090088","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781640090088_p0.jpg?v=1763684779","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781640090088","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}