Human Traces

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Human Traces (ISBN 0-09-179687-3) is a 2005 novel by Sebastian Faulks, best known as the British author of Birdsong and Charlotte Gray.

Tracing the intertwined lives of Doctors Thomas Midwinter, who is English, and Jacques Rebière, from Brittany, France, Human Traces explores the development of psychiatry and psychoanalysis in the late 19th Century, by way of excursions into first alienism then metaphysics, human evolution and neuroscience, before the search for what it means to be human takes us into a brief foray into the First World War. Central to the plot is the theory of Bicameralism (psychology).

Whilst some have criticised Human Traces as excessively expository, detailed and didactic, it has also been considered wide ranging, ambitious and well written. It is certainly long (the Hutchinson paperback is more than 600pp) and has enjoyed commercial success, having been a bestseller in the United Kingdom.