“And as the months passed, that video was the only proof I had that Vera was mentally ill. Otherwise, I sometimes felt the doctors were simply trying to medicate the Russianness out of her. Sometimes I wanted to reassure them: “No, no, a perverse interest in nothingness is actually perfectly normal.”

“And as the months passed, that video was the only proof I had that Vera was mentally ill. Otherwise, I sometimes felt the doctors were simply trying to medicate the Russianness out of her. Sometimes I wanted to reassure them: “No, no, a perverse interest in nothingness is actually perfectly normal.”

— Rufi Thorpe