Dirk Wittenborn

Modern-day cautionary tales about pharmaceuticals are commonplace, but Dirk Wittenborn’s new novel, Pharmakon, sets the clock back to the early ’50s, a less medicated time. The book follows a Yale professor who creates what seems to be a cure for depression and insanity, but instead yields tragic, violent results. A decade and a half later, long after the professor’s experiment has been covered up and forgotten, the past comes back to haunt his three children. Wittenborn reads from the book tonight at 7 p.m. at the Downer Avenue Schwartz Bookshop.