"I was now an established citizen with little hope of returning across the frontier; I was in the crazy world, separated now by more than locked doors and barred windows from the people who called themselves sane." When Janet Frame's doctor suggested that she write about her traumatic experiences in mental institutions in order to free herself from them, the result was the novel Faces in the Water. Istina Mavet descends through increasingly desolate wards, with the threat of leucotomy ever present. As she observes her fellow patients, long dismissed by hospital staff, with humour and compassion, she reveals her original and questing mind.