The Treatment and the Cure

Description

A compelling, perceptive and disturbing account of one man's fight to survive incarceration. After a brief spell in gaol, Len tarbutt, nineteen years old and serving a life sentence, is transferred to the maximum security ward of a mental hospital. In the treatment and its award-winning sequel,the Cure, tarbutt's efforts to survive the system into which he has been thrust, and at the same time preserve his individuality, are movingly and often humorously portrayed by Peter Kocan, himself a survivor of just such a system. First published to critical acclaim in the early 1980's, the treatment and the Cure are works of intensity, maturity, discipline and surprising humour, and offer the reader a rewarding and compelling literary experience. the Cure won the NSW Premier's Award for 1983.

Peter Kocan was born in Newcastle NSW in 1947. He left school at fourteen and worked on country properties and in factory jobs in the city. He served a decade in custody for a shooting offence and it was then that he began to write. He has published five collections of verse, and this is his fifth novel. His previous novel, FRESH FIELDS, won the 2004 FAW Christina Stead Award for Fiction, was short-listed for both the NSW and Queensland Premier's Literary Awards, and was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT. He has recently gained a doctorate in Creative Arts.