The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia

MacLean, David Stuart

ISBN 10: 0547519273 / ISBN 13: 9780547519272

Published by U.S.A.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014

About this Item

Hardback in fine condition with fine dust jacket.

Seller Inventory # 164646

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Answer to the Riddle Is Me: A Memoir of Amnesia
• Publisher: U.S.A.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0547519273
• ISBN 13: 9780547519272
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • psychology

About this title

Synopsis

“Brilliant and painful and hilarious.” —Antonya Nelson

On October 17, 2002, David MacLean “woke up” on a train platform in India with no idea who he was or why he was there. 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, but not his family, his friends, or the woman he was told he loved. All of these symptoms, it turned out, were the result of the commonly prescribed malarial medication he had been 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.

The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, drawn from David MacLean’s award-winning This American Life essay, is a deeply felt, closely researched, and intensely personal book. It asks every reader to confront the essential questions of our age: In our geographically and chemically fluid world, what makes me who I am? And how much can be stripped away before I become someone else entirely? 

About the Author

DAVID STUART MACLEAN is a Pen/American award-winning writer. His 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 with his wife.