Mayhem
- Author Sigrid Rausing
- Narrator Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
- Run Time 5 hours and 55 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Addiction and therapy, Health, illness and addiction: social aspects, Memoirs.
Titles Purchased
- 1-5
- 6-10
- 11-15
- 16-20
- Over 20
Price p/Title
- €9.95
- €8.95
- €7.95
- €6.95
- €5.95
Listen to a sample
What to expect
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Mayhem by Sigrid Rausing, read by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
A searingly powerful memoir about the impact of addiction on a family
In the summer of 2012 a woman named Eva was found dead in the London townhouse she shared with her husband, Hans K. Rausing. The couple had struggled with drug addiction for years, often under the glare of tabloid headlines. Now, writing with singular clarity and restraint the editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing, tries to make sense of what happened to her brother and his wife.
In Mayhem, she asks the difficult questions those close to the world of addiction must face. 'Who can help the addict, consumed by a shaming hunger, a need beyond control? There is no medicine: the drugs are the medicine. And who can help their families, so implicated in the self-destruction of the addict? Who can help when the very notion of 'help' becomes synonymous with an exercise of power; a familial police state; an end to freedom, in the addict's mind?'
Critics Review
-
Fierce, lyrical, and lucid memoir
Siri Hustvedt -
A profoundly articulate and harrowing memoir of a family grappling with addiction… I was impressed and moved
A. M. Homes -
A short, intense and moving memoir… a poignant and at times harrowing account that testifies to the resilience of the human spirit
Tatler -
Powerful and spare… her elisions and prevarications have a striking effect
The Observer -
Such a unique and haunting story to tell
The Sunday Times -
What gives this book its astonishing power is not the guilt, but the intelligence and literary skill. Beautifully structured… Rausing sets the scene with painterly delicacy and then steps back to analyse the implications of what she has revealed
The Guardian
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