| A novel (1966) by W.F. Hermans about the psychological process of getting a PhD. The title: Beyond sleep (literally: "To sleep no more").
At the start of the novel, the young geologist Alfred Issendorf is on his way to Finnmark - north of the polar circle - for a field study that will be vital to his PhD thesis. Vital to this study are the working hypothesis he has been sent out to investigate, and the detailed terrain maps he will be obtaining from his promotor's Norwegian colleagues.
These colleagues, in the politest way possible, inform Issendorf that his promotor's hypothesis is a crackpot theory, and they do not provide him with any maps.
With his goal and his means severely in question, Issendorf arrives on the tundra, and manages to exhaust himself with the daily labours of geological research, amidst the company of colleague PhD students. They help him, but at other times appear to obstruct him - he is never sure.
Issendorf loses all confidence. He feels incompetent; his hypothesis seems futile; the professors and students he has met are absorbed in their own work and interests, and unable to help him. He realises that he became a geologist to satisfy his mother's ambitions, which have nothing in common with his own.
Totally disillusioned with himself, with most of the people surrounding him, and with the process of science, Issendorf returns home.
If you want to work on a PhD thesis and fail, read this book.
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