The Broken Boy by Cockburn, Patrick - 2005

London: Jonathan Cape, 2005. A Fine unmarked copy with Fine dustjacket which is not price clipped. First edition, First printing. The author, a writer on foreign afairs, was six years old when he woke up one day in the summer of 1956 with a headache and a sore throat. His parents had recently returned to Ireland, to their house in East Cork, careless of the fact that a polio epidemic had broken out in Cork City. He caught the disease and was taken to the fever hospital where, alone for the first time in his life, he was kept in isolation, and with the disease attacking the nerves of his brain and the spinal cord leading to paralysis of the muscles, he could no longer walk. The book is at once a memoir of his own experience, a portrait of his parents, both prominent radicals, and the story of the Cork epidemic, the last great polio epidemic in the world, affecting 50,000 people. 20 illustrations. C3E. First Edition. Hard Cover. Fine/Fine. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall.