In the first frantic year of World War 1 London, Jan Strang, the son of a Swedish timber merchant and Lucy Green, daughter of a suburban postmaster become lovers, marry and live with Jan's cosmopolitan parents. Jan introduces Lucy to a new world of experiences and temptations. But then Jan goes off to fight. When he returns from his stint as a Second Lieutenant on the Front Line, Lucy quickly discovers he has returned a very different man from the one she married: wounded, battle-scarred and hooked on morphine. Can Lucy's love, faith and inner strength heal his deepest wounds? With a host of memorable characters, including the scruffy terrier Tinker, the ultimately optimistic Anaesthesia takes us on a gripping atmospheric journey from a London in confusion in 1915 over to Belgium and France and back again to a war-weary Britain. One is left wondering which is the real battle: the one in Europe or the battle of love over addiction?