A Marriage Made in Reading

Doctor Nwar is a most unusual psychiatrist: his patients include both the living and the dead. He journeys throughout the world, he travels in time, and his patients come from all ages to seek his help. In quiet voices, they tell him their personal stories and they reveal to him their innermost hopes, dreams and fears.

They discuss with him the fascinating subject of life, the big and the small issues. How do I search for happiness? How do I cope with pain and sadness? Doctor, what advice can you give me about love? About loss? About the possibility of finding a sustaining direction in my life?

Together, the psychiatrist and his patients share the most intimate stories. Together they laugh, they cry, they reminisce, and, most of all, together they wonder: what if.

Doctor Nwar's most interesting and revealing cases are presented by Phoebe von Messinger. Doctor von Messinger was a long-time (several centuries) manager of Doctor Nwar's psychiatry practice. She was also its resident nurse, and most importantly, his perennial chronicler. Touched, she admits, by the 'lure of the pen', she delves into the subtle complexity of his cases, outlining them lucidly in simple and readable prose. (She points out that all of the Doctor's case notes can be found in his time-travelling office, in the filing cabinets under the painting - the original - of Whistler's Mother. 'Most apt for a psychiatrist, don't you think?' she comments.)

Readers will be pleased to find that Doctor von Messinger is particularly adept at sketching revealing pen-portraits of the patients; and also most skilful at capturing Doctor Nwar's own warm and sympathetic character.

The patients search out Doctor Nwar from all over the world. And of course, from the other world. They also travel from different times and different ages. But their questions are the eternal ones. They ask Doctor Nwar to help them find happiness, and to grasp meaning in the flux and the beauty of life.