The Case of Thomas N.
John David Morley
 “Found by a police officer on a bench by the river” in an unnamed European city, a 16 year-old amnesiac boy is given the name ‘Thomas N.’ by state officials (‘N.’ being a bureaucratic abbreviation of ‘Name Unknown’), before being diagosed as suffering from a “fear of anything that objectively demonstrated his existence”. Explicitly referencing the mysterious 19th century case of Kaspar Hauser, the novel follows Thomas N.'s progress from psychiatric clinic to orphanage to an ostensibly normal existence living in a boarding-house and working in a nearby hotel. But soon he is embroiled in the investigation of an especially vicious and brutal murder, charged with a crime of which he has no memory of committing.