City of Incurable Women

In a fusion of fact and fiction, nineteenth-century women institutionalised as hysterics reveal what history ignored

'Where are the hysterics, those magnificent women of former times?' wrote Jacques Lacan. Long history’s ghosts, marginalised and dispossessed due to their gender and class, they are reimagined by Maud Casey as complex, flesh-and-blood people with stories to tell. These linked, evocative prose portraits, accompanied by period photographs and medical documents both authentic and invented, poignantly restore the humanity to the nineteenth-century female psychiatric patients confined in Paris’s Salpêtrière hospital and reduced to specimens for study by the celebrated neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot and his male colleagues.

'City of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteria — and the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of powerful originality, riveting historical interest, and haunting lyrical beauty.' — Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through

'City of Incurable Women is poetic rather than polemic, elegantly written and filled with resonant imagery... Affirmative and inspiring, a powerful demonstration of Maud Casey’s artistry.' —Boston Globe

'Casey’s subtle braiding of suffering and strength is the beating heart of this extraordinary work of imagination...These ‘incurable women’ create complex selves always in motion—full of pain but also power, pleasure, and above all mystery.' —On the Seawall

'Enlightening...[City of Incurable Women] defies convention and revels in searing, gorgeous language.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

'With acute empathy...Casey masterfully magnifies the stories of ‘incurable’ women in Paris’s 19th-century Salpêtrière hospital.' —Shelf Awareness

'Lyrical...Through thorough research and a cutting pen, Casey elevates these women back to their deserved place in history, bringing to life those who were reduced to mere photographs.' —Booklist

'An innovative novel...Soaringly lyrical' — Kirkus Reviews

Maud Casey is the author of five books of fiction, including City of Incurable Women, and a work of nonfiction, The Art of Mystery: The Search for Questions. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the St. Francis College Literary Prize, she teaches at the University of Maryland and lives in Washington, DC.

Praise for City of Incurable Women

American Library in Paris Book Award Shortlist
Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist
Balcones Prize for Fiction Finalist

“An amazing book.” —Héctor Tobar, Alta Journal

“[City of Incurable Women] is poetic rather than polemic, elegantly written and filled with resonant imagery. . . . Affirmative and inspiring, a powerful demonstration of Maud Casey’s artistry.” —Boston Globe

“Casey’s dedication reads ‘for my fellow incurables’ and this short, enchantingly strange book feels animated by compassion.” —Star Tribune

“Sensual, terrifying, humorous, and absurd, [City of Incurable Women] portrays many incurable things—namely, the human spirit.” —BOMB Magazine

“Investigational and piercing. . . . [Casey] dismantles the facade of cold, medical logic and its dehumanization of women while also creating beautiful poetry.” —San Francisco Book Review

“Casey’s subtle braiding of suffering and strength is the beating heart of this extraordinary work of imagination. . . . These ‘incurable women’ create complex selves always in motion—full of pain but also power, pleasure, and above all mystery.” —On the Seawall

“An evocative blend of fiction and nonfiction spirited with emotional power and historic significance. . . . Casey has written a triumphant homage to the women of Paris’s Salpêtrière asylum, and her fellow incurables everywhere.” —Longest Chapter

“Enlightening. . . . [City of Incurable Women] defies convention and revels in searing, gorgeous language.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“With acute empathy . . . Casey masterfully magnifies the stories of ‘incurable’ women in Paris’s 19th-century Salpêtrière hospital.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Lyrical. . . . Through thorough research and a cutting pen, Casey elevates these women back to their deserved place in history, bringing to life those who were reduced to mere photographs.” —Booklist

“An innovative novel. . . . Soaringly lyrical” —Kirkus Reviews

“In exquisite prose, Maud Casey has built a city inside a book, a city that is a hospital, a museum, a dance, a body in ecstasy just outside the frame. On every page of this achingly beautiful book, Casey brings a wise and feral attention to the so-called incurables of the ‘era of soul science’—Augustine, Louise, Marie, Geneviève, and a chorus of nameless others singing their private beginnings and public ends.” —Danielle Dutton, author of SPRAWL and Margaret the First

“City of Incurable Women is a brilliant exploration of the type of female bodily and psychic pain once commonly diagnosed as hysteria—and the curiously hysterical response to it commonly exhibited by medical men. It is a novel of powerful originality, riveting historical interest, and haunting lyrical beauty.” —Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend and What Are You Going Through

“I would follow Maud Casey anywhere. In City of Incurable Women, she has given us her best work yet. This is a song for the forgotten, full of voices that will stay with you and guide you—an astonishing portrayal of rage and hope. What a glorious work of art and what a true gift to us.” —Paul Yoon, author of Snow Hunters and Run Me to Earth

Select Praise for Maud Casey

“Casey is a consummate stylist. . . . This is a writer who pays deep, sensual attention to the world.” ―Geraldine Brooks, New York Times Book Review

“Brilliant.” —Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies and Florida

“Wildly original.” —Joan Silber, author of Ideas of Heaven and Improvement

“[A] compassionate, joyful, lyrical voice.” —George Saunders, author of Lincoln In the Bardo and Fox 8

“Listen. It’s a command that Maud Casey’s quick to utter. . . . With good reason: If you’re listening closely enough, you might just hear her pull off a feat as graceful as it is clever. Out of the clanging of church bells, the ticking of watches, the snatches of overheard phrases . . . out of this hectic mess of sounds, she manages to create a delicate harmony.” —NPR

“Casey evokes—with no shortage of verve and gusto—the romance of 19th-century Europe, when madness plagued more than asylums . . . bringing each internee, each insanity alive with such tenderness.” —Washington Post