WITH A NEW EPILOGUE BY THE AUTHOR

Like Primo Levi'sThe Periodic Table, The Noonday Demondigs 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.

Andrew Solomon holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge; is a professor of psychology at Columbia University and President of PEN American Center; and is a regular contributor to theGuardian, theNew Yorker, and theNew YorkTimes. A lecturer and activist, he is the author ofFar from the Tree: Parents,Children, and the Search for Identity, which won the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and many other awards; andThe Noonday Demon:An Atlas of Depression, which won the National Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and has been published in twenty-four languages. His TED talks have been viewed over 12 million times. A dual UK/US national, he lives in London and New York.www.andrewsolomon.com.

The most affecting, intelligent, important and constructive book on depression there has ever been - a key text by a New Yorker writer who has not only experienced the depths of depression but has researched every aspect of it.>