''[Terrence Holt] is Melville + Poe + Borges but with a heart far more capacious.'' - Junot Di?az<br/><br/>Holt, whose In the Valley of the Kings was hailed as a ''work of genius'' (New York Times) and made Amazon's Top Ten Short Story Collections of the year, brings a writer's eye to his experiences as a first - year graduate doctor.<br/><br/>Intense, ironic, heartfelt, and heartbreaking, these nine vivid episodes take us to the bedside of a patient dying in a house full of cursing parrots, through a nightmarish struggle to convince a man that he has cancer, to a life - and - death effort to keep an oxygen mask on a claustrophobic patient, and into the lounge of a snowbound hospital where doctors swap yarns through the night.<br/><br/>Personal, poignant, and meticulously precise, these stories evoke Chekhov, Maugham, and William Carlos Williams. Internal Medicine is an account of what it means to be a doctor, to be mortal, and to be human.