Gilbert Pinfold is a successful novelist of mature years, afflicted by insomnia and moments of paranoia and memory-loss. He decides to solve his problems by going on a cruise to the tropics, armed with writing materials and sleeping potions. But instead of the cure he seeks, the journey on board the Caliban spells disaster. Tormented by taunting voices in his cabin, Gilbert is brought to the very brink of insanity. Are the voices real or the product of his own feverish imagination? In this unsettling autobiographical novel, Evelyn Waugh vividly depicts his own mental breakdown - a terrifying ordeal of depression, hallucination and obession. Weaving dazzling wordplay and literary clues, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is a disquieting and sharply comic work of inventive genius.