A Mania of Love

About the Book

Plato proclaims two kinds of mania: one arising from disease, the other from love. Clarence, a bipolar classics professor, conjoins them while on sabbatical on the mystical Greek island of Hydra. His love affair with a seductive French waitress becomes pathological when she threatens with blackmail the professor's marriage with his beloved wife. To escape her clutches, he resorts to a violent solution, justified on the ancient beliefs of the poet Archilochus and of death-life transformations by Asklepios, the father of psychiatry. The method is macabre, worthy of a Euripides tragedy, but Clarence, because of his mental condition and classical idealism, represses all memory of his heinous deed. It remains for the inspector from Athens to determine whether Clarence has moral justification or whether he has to pay for his infidelity.

About the Author

Professor J N Pratley holds degrees from Oberlin College (BA in liberal arts) and the University of Texas Austin (PhD cell physiology). The relationship of science to philosophy has underpinned his entire life, culminating in two novels (Leto's Journey and The Green Helix), short stories (website: jnPratley.com), and several scientific research journals. His Greek heritage and involvement with the Aegean Circle in Andros, Greece, and the Aegean Arts Center in Paros, Greece, has provided inspiration for his creative efforts. While firmly committed to scientific efforts, he also believes that human nature consists of elements beyond what we call rationality. "Mania," the ancient Greek philosophical name given to this element, is the source of much human history and passion. And what glorifies the srts. He now lives in the great state of Texas, an avid tennis, piano, and bridge player, and a devotee of the classics in literature and music. He adulates, also, greasy hamburgers and Greek yogurt.