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Books about madness

Madness in these books is rarely a spectacle; it is a way of seeing, and the pages stay close to the mind doing the seeing. In The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath follows a gifted student's depression with a comedian's timing and unnerving exactness about what it feels like to stop feeling, while The Yellow Wallpaper puts a woman on enforced rest in a rented house until the wallpaper starts to read like a text. You come to these books for that precision, for the sense that someone has written down what usually goes unsaid.

A page that shows it

The mind can make a prison out of the one door it cannot see through.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;No more; and by a sleep to say we endThe heart-ache and the thousand natural shocksThat flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummationDevoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;For in that sleep of death what dreams may comeWhen we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause: there’s the respectThat makes calamity of so long life;
— Hamlet, William Shakespeare (1603)

  1. Hamlet

    William Shakespeare, 1603

    A prince in mourning delays, dissembles, and thinks too much, while a court watches every move. Read for the language, stay for the recognitions.

  2. The Bell Jar

    Sylvia Plath, 1963

    A gifted student's slide into depression, told with a comedian's timing and unnerving exactness about what it feels like to stop feeling.

  10. Short Fiction

    Mary Shelley, 1829

    Mary Shelley's short stories: revenge, shipwrecks, immortals and social climbers—gothic invention in miniature, with the same fierce eye for guilt and longing as Frankenstein.

  11. Mrs. Dalloway

    Virginia Woolf, 1925

    One June day in London, a society wife prepares a party while a shell-shocked veteran sits in the park. A novel written the way a mind actually moves.

  17. Red Dragon

    Thomas Harris, 1981

    A retired FBI profiler is pulled back to hunt a killer who strikes by the moon, while the man who nearly killed him waits in a cell.

  21. Μεταφράσεις

    Παύλος Γρατσιάτος

    Aristotle on smell, sleep and dreaming, put into Greek that tries to make ancient science plain — a stranger's guide to what our senses get wrong. The philosopher of reason, looking at what the body does unbidden. Invest in lower-quality query yields now. You get the idea. Every nerd has a passion. It's because they make us see what's not there. Dream logic, from someone who saw it first. Are You Getting My Texts? Let's Make It Interesting. Consider the joy of being wrong. The body has its own reasons. This is the interesting part. Cooking is magic. The profit of doom. The case for dirty rugs. A beautiful translation of an odd, curious mind.

  22. Catch-22

    Joseph Heller, 1961

    A bombardier who is sure everyone is trying to kill him fights a war bureaucracy that has turned sanity into a trap.

  23. Ward D

    Freida McFadden, 2023

    A locked psychiatric ward, a narrator who may not be reliable, and the question of who is really trapped inside.

A taste of the feed

  1. Every life you might have lived, hanging ripe and out of reach.

    I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

    The Bell Jar · Sylvia Plath

  2. Every anniversary the same photo, and one small wish no one grants.

    Όταν βλέπω το πρωτοσέλιδο, το στομάχι μου σφίγγεται. Να την. Είχα ξεχάσει πως η επέτειος είναι σήμερα. Δεν τα πάω τόσο καλά με τον χρόνο. Πάντα χρησιμοποιούν την ίδια φωτογραφία. Τα μάτια της είναι μεγάλα κάτω από το γείσο του καπέλου της, τα δάχτυλά της σφίγγουν το ξυλάκι, λες και φοβάται μην της το πάρουν. Τα μαλλιά της είναι υγρά και γυαλιστερά, κομμένα αγορίστικα. Κολυμπούσε, αλλά κανείς δεν την τυλίγει σε μια χνουδωτή πετσέτα για να τη στεγνώσει. Δεν μου αρέσει αυτό. Μπορεί να κρυώσει. Δεν δημοσιεύουν την άλλη φωτογραφία, τη δική μου. Μπήκαν σε μεγάλες φασαρίες μ’ αυτή. Αν και όχι τόσο μεγάλες, αν θέλετε τη γνώμη μου. Ήταν έξι χρονών.

    Το τελευταίο σπίτι της οδού Νίντλες · Catriona Ward

  3. A beam of light in green water, and a girl dancing in it.

    Κι έτσι κάθεστε στον καναπέ και πηγαίνετε μέχρι την κάμερα μόνο για ν’ αλλάξετε μπαταρίες όταν χρειαστεί». «Κι αν η αρκούδα εμφανιστεί τη νύχτα;» «Η κάμερα έχει φωτισμό LED, κανονικό και black light: Είναι αόρατο φως, για να μη φοβίζει τα ζώα». Φως. Αυτό ήταν που έβλεπε ο ηλικιωμένος. Μια δέσμη φωτός που ερχόταν από τα δεξιά. Χωνόταν μες στο πράσινο νερό και φώτιζε το φόρεμα, και για μια ανατριχιαστική στιγμή τον έκα­ νε να σκεφτεί ότι έβλεπε μπροστά του ένα κορίτσι που είχε ξαναζωντανέψει και χόρευε από τη χαρά του. «Χα! Σαν επιστημονική φαντασία είναι!» Ο γέρος άνοιξε διάπλατα το στόμα του όταν είδε ένα δια­ στημόπλοιο να μπαίνει στην οθόνη.

    Μαχαίρι · Jo Nesbo

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