The Comforts of Madness

Paul Sayer (born October 4, 1955, in South Milford, near Leeds) is an English novelist and former psychiatric nurse whose debut novel, The Comforts of Madness (1988), won the Whitbread Award for both Best First Novel and Book of the Year, beating out Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. He went on to publish eight more novels, including the Booker Prize-longlisted The Absolution Game (1992), with works translated into ten languages; after a hiatus, he resumed writing with support from The Wingate Foundation and served as a Royal Literary Fund fellow at Leeds and York Universities.