A Simple Intervention
Published on 3. October 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
192 pages
978-1-908670-87-8 (ISBN)
Description
A ground-breaking surgical intervention promises to free people from psychological disorders. The procedure is painless, the risks are minimal, and patients are calmer and more compliant after healing. The doctor promises them a new and productive life, free from suffering - can it be so simple?
Meret is a nurse on the surgical ward. The hospital is her home, and her uniform is her identity. She supports her patients through their interventions and is proud to be a part of the solution. But when she falls in love with another nurse, she crosses an invisible boundary and her certainty in the system begins to crumble.
With echoes of Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood, this is the story of a world of rigid hierarchies and a love with its own rules.
Meret is a nurse on the surgical ward. The hospital is her home, and her uniform is her identity. She supports her patients through their interventions and is proud to be a part of the solution. But when she falls in love with another nurse, she crosses an invisible boundary and her certainty in the system begins to crumble.
With echoes of Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood, this is the story of a world of rigid hierarchies and a love with its own rules.
Reviews / Votes
Yael Inokai illuminates the women with clear sentences; she writes with a calm hand and is not afraid of the darkness. - Dorothee Elmiger, author of Out of the Sugar FactoryA haunting and thoughtful novel, Yael Inokai's A Simple Intervention has echoes of Kazuo Ishiguro's Booker-shortlisted Never Let Me Go. - New Books in German
'The writing here is understated, precise and loaded, calling to mind fellow Swiss writer Fleur Jaeggy's Sweet Days of Discipline. The translation - from German - by Marielle Sutherland is finely attuned to tone and nuance. This is an impressive novel with moments of icy clarity yet also with affecting tenderness.' - Ronan Hession, Irish Times
'Exhibits all the hallmarks of a dystopian classic [...] Yet not every dystopia unfolds through dramatic spectacle or post-apocalyptic overtures. Yael Inokai's A Simple Intervention is an excellent example of how a quieter, insidious approach to the genre can be just as terrifying, aligning itself with the subtler, almost benevolent tyranny of Huxley's Brave New World.' - nb. Magazine
'A work of elegant restraint, but with great unease thrumming beneath the surface...Never Let Me Go came to mind.'
-Niall Harrison, Locus
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 122 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
218 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-908670-87-8 (9781908670878)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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Persons
Yael Inokai was born in 1989 in Basel. She won the 2018 Swiss Literature Prize for her second novel, Mahlstrom. Her third novel, A Simple Intervention, was longlisted for the 2022 German Book Prize and is her first work to be translated into English. Yael Inokai lives in Berlin and is an editor for the magazine Politisch Schreiben.