Asylum

John Hughes

 

‘Just because you can’t see the chains doesn’t mean they don’t exist.’

In the Sanctuary, two robed men cut the hair of clients who have been called to pass through the White or Black Door. Along with their hair, the clients shed stories: of the horrors of their past, the Place they’ve inhabited since their escape, and what lies beyond the Doors. These stories are inscribed as Legends, but do they record a vision of Paradise or Hell?

This allegory, echoing Kafka, illuminates the stark terror of the modern age, marked by a border that's in constant shift between gods and men, truth and deception, freedom and constraint, memory and forgetting; revealing a world whose essence is its hiddenness - a world that hides, not in darkness, but in the light.

‘What I will tell you now is only guesswork. Because when a person is called they just disappear and are never seen again. We assume that their case is finally being heard, that they have moved on from here to the next stage. You seem to think of it as something dreadful, but it’s why we came here after all. We came here of our own free will, you must remember that, and we are free to leave at any time.’

 

 

Book details 

PUBLICATION DATE: March 2016
FORMAT: Paperback
EXTENT: 170 pages
SIZE: C-format, 234 x 153mm
ISBN: 9781742588261
RIGHTS: World