Susannah Cahalan is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness, a memoir about her struggle with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain. Her second and most recent book is called The Great Pretender.

Recommended Reading:

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun-Wang

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

This episode is brought to you by Catapult, publishers of Rough Magic by Lara Prior-Palmer. "If you like your memoirs to revolve around singular experiences, Lara Prior-Palmer’s Rough Magic delivers." That’s what The New York Times said about Rough Magic, the extraordinary true story of one young woman’s experience riding what’s billed as “The World’s Longest and Toughest Horse Race”—The Mongol Derby.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices