Bodies, Jed Mercurio

Inside every hospital exists a world no outsider has been allowed to see, not even the idealistic young man who has come to start a career in medicine. What awaits him is a life of institutionalised cynicism, pitch-black humour and visceral sex, and soon it changes him more terribly than he could ever have feared. Written by a former doctor, Bodies is a novel of almost unbearable power and intensity. It is also a moving portrait of the loss of innocence, the healing power of sexual love, and of a young man's quest for redemption in a world that's lost its sense of right and wrong.

In Bodies, Jed Mercurio, the man behind the television series Cardiac Arrest, has produced an even more disturbingly authentic despatch from the frontline of hospital life.