Join J. M. Coetzee and Thomas Keneally in rediscovering Nobel Laureate Patrick White's The Vivisector, in which Hurtle Duffield, a painter, coldly dissects the weaknesses of any and all who enter his circle.

His sister’s deformity, a grocer’s moonlight indiscretion, the passionate illusions of the women who love him-all are used as fodder for his art. It is only when Hurtle meets an egocentric adolescent whom he sees as his spiritual child does he experience a deeper, more treacherous emotion in this tour de force of sexual and psychological menace that sheds brutally honest light on the creative experience.