I first encountered Walker Percy’s novel The Thanatos Syndrome, a the 1987 National Right to Life convention. I’d heard of Percy (mostly through seeing the titles of his books of my parent’s bookshelves), but as I examined a copy of the book with a cover that seemed most appropriate for a thriller of some sort, I wondered, What is this doing here?
After reading the book, the answer was clear, of course. In The Thanatos Syndrome, one of twentieth-century America’s most interesting and provocative novelists offers a vivid and challenging treatment of the consequences of devaluing human life.
