Life and death in a modern hospital, from Seamus O'Mahony, the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now and Can Medicine Be Cured?

Life and death in a modern hospital, from Seamus O'Mahony, the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now and Can Medicine Be Cured? Seamus O'Mahony charts the realities of work in the 'ministry of bodies', that huge complex where people come to be cured and to die. From unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls and wards that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence. Absurd general emails, vain and self-promoting specialists, the relentless parade of self-destructive drinkers and drug users, the comical expectations of baffled patients: this is not a conventional medical memoir, but the collective biography of one of our great modern institutions – the general hospital – through the eyes of a brilliant writer, who happens to be a doctor.

"There's plenty of interesting strangeness" - iNews

"Funny, sad, infuriating, heartening and depressing, all in almost equal measure, although the overarching theme is one of deep regret for what has been lost... There are many parts of The Ministry of Bodies that had me laughing out loud... O'Mahony has a very keen eye for the absurd. But much of it made me wince too... The moral conviction of the book is unwavering'" - Irish Sunday Independent