Umbrella (novel)
Umbrella is the ninth novel by Will Self, published in 2012. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2012, Will Self's first shortlist nomination, although his 2002 novel Dorian, an Imitation was longlisted for the prize. Content The stream-of-consciousness novel tells the story of a psychiatrist Zack Busner and his treatment of a patient at Friern Hospital in 1971 who has encephalitis lethargica and has been in a vegetative state since 1918, when she was a munitions worker. The patient, Audrey Death, has two brothers whose activities before and during the First World War are interwoven into her own story. Busner brings her back to consciousness using a new drug (L-Dopa, which was used for the same purpose by Oliver Sacks in the 1970s). In the final element of the story, in 2010 the asylum is no longer in existence and the recently retired Busner travels across north London trying to find the truth about his experience with his patient. The novel is written in a flowing fashion without chapters and very few paragraph breaks between scenes. It intercuts between different time periods and is composed of interlaced narratives. In some senses its structuring can be