Intensive care : a novel / Janet Frame.

"[This book] is a tale of two worlds: one that we know, and one that we foresee - and fear. It begins with Tom Livingstone, young and wounded in the trenches of Flanders: falling in love with his nurse, and learning first the value of life, and, much later, the value of death. Through his experiences and dreams we come to know and understand Tom and his family. and we gain a vivid, recognisable, poignant image of their world. The story thyen moves to another world, an all too believable fantasy place, hardened by the horrors of a third global war: a world that has learned well the lessons that Tom had to woirk out for himself a century before. It is described in the deceptively simple language of an autistic girl, who sits under Tom's old pear tree, waiting for the eugenic exterminators to take her away ..."