Pilgrim by Timothy Findley

 

The year is 1912 and a new patient is admitted to a mental health residence in Zurich, Switzerland.  He is known only as Pilgrim and has been admitted due to repeated suicide attempts.  He is assigned to the institute's rising star, Dr. Carl Jung.  Pilgrim is mute for weeks but slowly Jung gets to know him, mainly through his journals.  Pilgrim believes that he cannot die and that he has lived many lives, as a model for Da Vinci whom he hates, and many others.

Jung is able to slowly gain Pilgrim's trust and talk with him.  But Jung is also undergoing issues.  He is not sure if his approach, so different from the other doctors, is appropriate.  He is also involved in an affair that leaves him estranged from his wife and children and that will continue until 1953.  

Readers will learn much about Carl Jung and the other historical figures that are used in the book.  They will also be introduced to the interesting individual known as Pilgrim who regards his time in the institute as imprisonment and who is determined to leave and live his life as he chooses if he can't put an end to it.  The world is about to undergo the changes of the first world war along with all the other changes in things such as psychiatric treatments that had stayed stable for decades.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.