The Physician

England and Persia, the eleventh century. After the death of his parents, Rob Cole is apprenticed to an itinerant barber-surgeon and learns the limited remedies available to ordinary people. He also discovers an unsettling ability to sense when a patient is close to death. Convinced that medicine can offer more than performance and guesswork, Rob leaves England and undertakes a dangerous journey across Europe towards Ispahan, where the most advanced medical teaching available to him is practised.

Because Christians are excluded from the school, Rob assumes a Jewish identity in order to study under the physician Avicenna. His education exposes him to clinical observation, surgery, anatomy and epidemic disease while placing him at continual risk of discovery. The novel follows his development from orphaned apprentice to trained healer and uses his divided identity to explore medieval medicine, religious boundaries and the transfer of knowledge between England and the Islamic world.