PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Born in Sweden in 1857, Axel Munthe trained to be a doctor in Paris at a precociously early age, establishing a fashionable practice (Maupassant and Strindberg were his patients) and quickly gaining an international reputation. He became the friend of royalty; Tsar Nicholas asked him to look after his son - Rasputin was their second choice.
Some published memoirs are more than words on paper: they are encounters with their authors. Meet Axel Munthe, born in Sweden in 1857; subsequently a medical doctor with fashionable practices in Paris and Rome, also a volunteer during the cholera epidemic in Naples and in the aftermath of the earthquake that decimated Messina in 1908. A humorous and non-judgemental observer of men, Munthe was more than a medico; he brought an element of intuitive magic (later called psychotherapy ) to his practice. This recounting of his past as a peripatetic practitioner introduces us to a man driven by curiosity and wanderlust, touched by genius; many of the anecdotes could stand alone as short stories of depth and eye-blurring emotion. Under it all, leit-motif and anchor in a bohemian loner's life, Munthe's ongoing restoration of the ruined villa of Tiberius on Capri: the lighthouse of his life. This is an unlikely masterpiece: a perfectly wonderful book. (Kirkus UK)
