Claire Robertson – författare

Imagine being unable to recognise your spouse, your children, or even yourself when you look in the mirror, despite having good eyesight and being able to read well and name objects. This is a condition which, in rare cases, some brain injury survivors experience every day.

Identity Unknown gives an exceptional, poignant and in-depth understanding of what it is like to live with the severe after-effects of brain damage caused by a viral infection of the brain. It tells the story of Claire, a nurse, wife, and mother of four, who having survived encephalitis, was left with an inability to recognise faces – a condition also known as prosopagnosia together with a loss of knowledge of people and more general loss of semantic memory

Part One describes our current knowledge of encephalitis, of perception and memory, and the theoretical aspects of prosopagnosia and semantic memory. Part Two, told in Claire’s own words, is an account of her life before her illness, her memories of the early days in hospital, an account of the treatment she received at the Oliver Zangwill Centre, and her description of the long-term consequences of encephalitis. Claire’s profound insights, clear writing style, and powerful portrayal of her feelings provide us with a moving insider’s view of her condition. These chapters also contain additional commentary from Barbara Wilson, providing further detail about the condition, treatment possibilities, potential outcomes, and follow-up options.

Identity Unknown provides a unique personal insight into a condition which many of us have, for too long, known too little about. It will be of great interest to a broad audience including professionals working in rehabilitation settings, and all those who have sustained a brain injury, their families and carers.

Imagine being unable to recognise your spouse, your children, or even yourself when you look in the mirror, despite having good eyesight and being able to read well and name objects. This is a condition which, in rare cases, some brain injury survivors experience every day.

Identity Unknown gives an exceptional, poignant and in-depth understanding of what it is like to live with the severe after-effects of brain damage caused by a viral infection of the brain. It tells the story of Claire, a nurse, wife, and mother of four, who having survived encephalitis, was left with an inability to recognise faces – a condition also known as prosopagnosia together with a loss of knowledge of people and more general loss of semantic memory

Part One describes our current knowledge of encephalitis, of perception and memory, and the theoretical aspects of prosopagnosia and semantic memory. Part Two, told in Claire’s own words, is an account of her life before her illness, her memories of the early days in hospital, an account of the treatment she received at the Oliver Zangwill Centre, and her description of the long-term consequences of encephalitis. Claire’s profound insights, clear writing style, and powerful portrayal of her feelings provide us with a moving insider’s view of her condition. These chapters also contain additional commentary from Barbara Wilson, providing further detail about the condition, treatment possibilities, potential outcomes, and follow-up options.

Identity Unknown provides a unique personal insight into a condition which many of us have, for too long, known too little about. It will be of great interest to a broad audience including professionals working in rehabilitation settings, and all those who have sustained a brain injury, their families and carers.

Katrijn van der Caab, freed slave and wigmaker’s apprentice, travels with her eccentric employer from Cape Town to Vogelzang, a remote farm where a hairless girl needs their services. The year is 1794, it is the age of enlightenment, and on Vogelzang the master is conducting strange experiments in human breeding and classification. It is also here that Trijn falls in love.Two hundred years later and a thousand miles away, Sister Vergilius, a nun at a mission hospital, wants to free herself from an austere order. It is 1961 and her life intertwines with that of a gentleman farmer – an Englishman and suspected Communist – who collects and studies insects and lives a solitary life. While a group of Americans arrive in a cavalcade of caravans and a new republic is about to be born, desire is unfurling slowly.In Claire Robertson’s majestic debut novel, two stories echo across centuries to expose that which binds us and sets us free.

‘In the end, you could choose to say no more than this: that in the high summer of 1938, in a courtroom in the town of Gower in the Union of South Africa, a case of arson came to an abrupt and irregular end, confounding those who had followed the matter and prompting speculation that approached, but did not quite deliver, scandal …’ When an illicit affair in British Ceylon comes to light in 1902, seventeen-year-old Boer prisoner-of-war Henry Vos is disgraced. Months before, a short film made his face widely recognisable, but now he is shunned by Boer and Brit alike.Three decades later, Henry is the magistrate of Gower, a small inland town in the Union of South Africa, where he makes friends with young newcomer Adaira van Brugge. Adaira’s story will start to echo Henry’s when she takes a secret lover: Ira Gevint, a Jew who fled Europe only to wind up in a town ready to experiment with its own kind of persecution.As events threaten to unravel the careful life Henry has created for himself, desire surfaces alongside nationalist fervour in Claire Roberston’s arresting new novel about the courage to choose love over fear.