Brain on Fire is the stunning debut from journalist and author Susannah Cahalan,
recounting the real-life horror story of how a sudden and mysterious illness pu
t her on descent into a madness for which there seemed to be no cure 'My first s
erious blackout marked the line between sanity and insanity. Though I would have
moments of lucidity over the coming days and weeks, I would never again be the
same person...' Susannah Cahalan was a happy, clever, healthy twenty-four-year o
ld. Then one day she woke up in hospital, with no memory of what had happened or
how she had got there.
Within weeks, she would be transformed into someone u
nrecognizable, descending into a state of acute psychosis, undergoing rages and
convulsions, hallucinating that her father had murdered his wife; that she could
control time with her mind. Everything she had taken for granted about her life
, and who she was, was wiped out. This is Susannah's story of her terrifying des
cent into madness and the desperate hunt for a diagnosis, as, after dozens of te
sts and scans, baffled doctors concluded she should be confined in a psychiatric
ward.
