A young Canadian doctor, Norman Bethune, sets up a practice which he hopes will lead to money and prestige; however, his social conscience takes him on a journey through the Canada of the Great Depression, the Spain of the Spanish Civil War, and the China of the Chinese Civil War and Japanese invasion. Ultimately, the journey becomes a quest to understand the world in which Bethune finds himself living, to develop a compassionate response to that world, and to discover the essence of himself as a human being.

Also Available

The Making of The Only Person Alive in the World - a reflective journal

This journal records the author’s reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

Planning The Only Person Alive in the World - a planning notebook

During the writing of the novel, the author kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook - now in print form - reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the eighteenth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the twenty-first century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download at www.johnpassfield.ca.