THE NOONDAY DEMON

WITH A NEW EPILOGUE BY THE AUTHOR Like Primo Levi s The Periodic Table The Noonday Demon digs deep into personal history as Andrew Solomon narrates brilliantly and terrifyingly his own agonising experience of depression Solomon also portrays the pain of others in different cultures and societies whose lives have been shattered by depression and uncovers the historical social biological chemical and medical implications of this crippling disease He takes us through the halls of mental hospitals where some of his subjects have been imprisoned for decades into the research labs to the burdened and afflicted poor rural and urban He talks to faith healers and voyages around the world in a quest for folk wisdom He analyses the medications of today as well as reviewing the politics of diagnosis and treatment and perhaps most significantly he looks at the vital role of will and love in the process of recovery ONE OF THE GUARDIAN S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY