An Infinite Sadness

In a small village in the Swiss Alps, in the aftermath of World War II, particle physics and psychiatry grapple with a forever changed world. Nicholas walks the wooded path between the sanitarium where he works and his home, alert to a possible menace lurking in the trees, haunted by the possibility of an evil just out of sight. His days are spent ministering to minds that have been grievously damaged by the years of brutal conflict, violence suffered and violence abetted. The patients have different stories, but none of them have left the war behind. Anna, his wife, looks for meaning among the scientists she works with, exploring the dark matter that orders the universe. Failures of nerve and intrusions from the past dog them both, and neither is able to fully inhabit the present, that moment that is also—to Einstein, and in Jewish tradition—eternity. An infinite sadness, Xerxenesky offers, may be “the size of the universe or of the empty space inside an atom” and no certainty can defeat it, no reckoning be sufficient.

A novel of ideas, both introspective and brutal, inspired by the works of Robert Musil, W. G. Sebald and Hermann Broch.

Shortly after the end of World War II, Nicolas, a young French psychiatrist, is invited to work at a hospital in Switzerland, and moves to a nearby village with his wife Anna. Known for its humane treatment methods, the hospital accepts patients from all over Europe. Nicolas rejects treatments like electroshock therapy, preferring to talk with his patients until something is uncovered—either in the patient’s unconscious mind or his own.

In these conversations, various war wounds are brought to the surface, in a delicately balanced game combining trust and madness. The young psychiatrist confronts the demons of historical guilt and seeks to reconcile his materialism with spirituality. Set against the backdrop of the development of the first drugs to treat depression and other mental illnesses, and while discussing issues that are still pertinent to our times, this touching novel forces us to confront past traumas and, above all, to face our fears for the future.

Although the story takes place in 1950s Europe, it is also a meditation on the contemporary mental health crisis and a metaphor for the lingering of fascist ideas around the world, with specific references to present-day Brazil.

• | Author: Antonio Xerxenesky, Daniel Hahn
• | Publisher: Charco Press
• | Publication Date: Oct 21, 2025
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• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781917260121
• | ISBN-10: 1917260121