The Answer to the Riddle is Me - Softcover

David Stuart MacLean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1907595163 ISBN 13: 9781907595165

Publisher: Short Books Ltd, 2014

Synopsis

In 2002, at age twenty-eight, david maclean woke up in a foreign land with his memory wiped clean. No money. No passport. No identity. Taken to a mental hospital by the police, maclean then started to hallucinate so severely he had to be tied down. Soon he could remember song lyrics and scenes from television shows, but not his family, his friends, or the woman he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he was taking. Upon his return to the states, he struggled to piece together the fragments of his former life in a harrowing, absurd, and unforgettable journey back to himself. A deeply felt, closely researched, and intensely personal book, the answer to the riddle is me, drawn from maclean's award-winning this american life essay, confronts and celebrates the dark, mysterious depths of our psyches and the myriad ways we are all unknowable, especially to ourselves.

About this title

About the Author

David Stuart MacLean is a PEN/American Award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Ploughshares and on the radio program This American Life. He has a PhD from the University of Houston and is a co-founder of the Poison Pen Reading Series. He lives in Chicago.

Review

"Mesmerizing - Written in vivid, blooming detail." --Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl "Brilliant and painful and hilarious." --Antonya Nelson "A gripping medical mystery, a heartwarming personal journey, and a chilling indictment of the commonly prescribed drug that upended MacLean's life - but left his superb literary skills very much intact." --Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks "A who can break your heart, terrify you, and make you laugh all on the same page. The Answer To The Riddle Is Me is a masterful exploration of the funhouse of identity." --Mat Johnson, author of Pym and Incognito. "The Answer to the Riddle Is Me is a harrowing account of vanishing - What does it mean to be the person you are? How much can be stripped away before you are no longer you? This is a thrilling, fascinating book that resides in the mind as if you lived it yourself." --Robert Boswell, author of Tumbledown and The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards

Edition details

• Publisher: Short Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1907595163
• ISBN 13: 9781907595165
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320