Dirty Work

Dirty Work

Summary

Winner of the McKitterick Prize



Two women in a room.

‘Courageous’ Rachel Cusk, Guardian

One is dying.

‘Gripping’ Observer

The other just sits back and watches.

‘Necessary’ Independent

For both, there is everything to lose.


Surgeons are meant to save lives, but Nancy is a special kind of surgeon. When she makes a mistake in the operating theatre she is summoned to explain herself to a tribunal and is forced to consider what it means to be a doctor who has killed as well as cured. And to realise that her own redemption can only come through telling a tale that nobody wants to hear.

Gabriel Weston, author of the acclaimed Direct Red: A Surgeon’s Story, winner of the 2010 PEN/Ackerley Prize, has written an extraordinarily moving and powerful novel.

Reviews

  • A lot of novels are called “brave”, and they aren’t. This one is.
    Lionel Shriver

About the author

Gabriel Weston

Gabriel Weston was born in 1970. She studied English at Edinburgh University before attending medical school in London, graduating as a doctor in 2000 and becoming a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 2003. Her Sunday Times bestselling debut, Direct Red, was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and won the PEN Ackerley Award for Autobiography. She is also the author of a novel Dirty Work, which won the McKitterick Prize and presented the BBC medical series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor and Incredible Medicine: Dr Weston’s Casebook. She now works as a part-time ENT surgeon and lives in London with her husband and children.
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