The Doctor Is Sick
17 September 1997
Territory Rights — Worldwide excluding Canada and the British Commonwealth.
Description
"Fine, sly, rich comedy." —New York Times Book Review
Dr. Edwin Spindrift, a very ordinary lecturer in linguistics, has been sent home from Burma with a brain tumor. Closer to words than people, his sense of reality is further altered by his condition. The night before he is to be operated on, Spindrift decides—shaven-headed, shirtless, and penniless—to postpone the surgery by escaping from the hospital. Things and people he hardly knew existed outside of his dictionaries swoop down on him as he careens through adventures in nighttime London.
Reviews
"A cinematic British comedy in which Thurber-Man is pitted against London riff-raff, this doesn't give the full range of Burgess' Promethean verbal with but it is hilarious." — Kirkus Reviews
"The Doctor is Sick places [Burgess] in a class with Wodehouse, the early Anthony Powell, and even Evelyn Waugh at his best." — J. B. Lindroth, America