The Amnesia Clinic — James Scudamore

Anti and Fabián are best friends and classmates at the Quito International School. Anti (short for Anthony) is the quiet, asthmatic English kid, and Fabián is the char­ismatic and flamboyant local. Anti lives in the dull ex-pat world inhabited by his parents, while Fabián lives with his cool, eccentric Uncle Suarez. Suarez, a storyteller par excel­lence, infects the boys with his passion for outlandish tales. Before long, the relationship between these two fifteen-year-olds becomes one conducted entirely through the medium of storytelling, and they lose sight of the boundaries between fact and fiction. 

 

With confused emotions and a tenuous grip on reality, the boys embark on a quixotic voyage across Ecuador in search of an “Amnesia Clinic” that may or may not exist. A complex and beautifully crafted piece of storytelling about storytelling itself, The Amnesia Clinic explores how truth can be so very much more fanciful than fact, and how the collision between fantasy and reality can lead to harmful delusions.