Paralysis

The novel's protagonist is Aram Shah, a widowed university professor who raised his daughter, Marisa, on his own after his wife died during her second pregnancy. At the outset of the novel, he wakes up during a visit to the mountains and ponders the meaning of three dreams he had had overnight—of lions frail with age; of a palace reeking with disinfectant; and of a museum among whose holdings is a jar with an embryo. The intensity of his feelings induces a stroke, and he reawakens, paralyzed, in a small regional hospital, where he is tenderly cared for by a resident matron, Asika.