Medical Storyworlds: Health, Illness, and Bodies in Russian and European Literature at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Though medicine is often viewed as a strictly scientific practice, personal narrative is fundamental to doctor-patient dialogues. In Medical Storyworlds (Columbia University Press), Fratto investigates the interplay of medicine and literature in the early 1900s, a transformative time for both fields. The book blends together scholarship from Russian authors, European writers, and medical practitioners of the era, ultimately suggesting new possibilities and limits to human agency and free will.