Home › Nonfiction › Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness
A journalist suddenly loses her grip on reality, and doctors struggle to find out why
2012Fast paceTense
What it is about
Susannah Cahalan is a 24-year-old reporter in New York when she begins to experience paranoia, seizures and strange behavior. Doctors cannot explain it until one finds a rare, treatable condition. She pieces together her own story from medical records and the memories of others.
Who will enjoy it
Readers who like medical memoirs.
What you will get
A quick and gripping memoir that brought attention to a rare disease.
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness Facts: Pages, Genre and Setting
Genre
Nonfiction · Medical mystery · Memoir · Neurology
Length
261 pages · ≈ 7 h
More about this book
Characters
Susannah Cahalan, her family and her doctors.
Setting
New York hospitals, in 2009.
What makes it different
A memoir by someone who cannot remember much of her own illness.
Feel
Gripping, scary and hopeful.
Night
Girl, Interrupted
Bringing Up Bébé
Between the World and Me
The Story of Art
Thinking, Fast and Slow
A Brief History of Time
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings