Recently having abandoned his R. D. Laing-influenced experiment in running a therapeutic community -- the so-called Concept House in Willesden -- maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner arrives at Friern Hospital, a vast Victorian mental asylum in North London, under a professional and marital cloud. He has every intention of avoiding controversy, but then he encounters Audrey Death, a working-class girl from Fulham born in 1890 who has been immured in Friern for decades. A socialist, a feminist and a munitions worker at the Woolwich Arsenal, Audrey fell victim to the encephalitis lethargica sleeping sickness epidemic at the end of the First World War and has been in a coma ever since. Realising that Audrey is just one of a number of post-encephalitics scattered throughout the asylum, Busner becomes involved in an attempt to bring them back to life -- with wholly unforeseen consequences.