"There are galaxies within the human mind, and madness wants to risk everything for the daring flight, reckless and beautiful and crazed. Everyone knows Icarus fell. But I love him for the fact that he dared to fly. Mania unfurls the invitation to fly too high, too near the sun..."

 

A stark, lyrical and personal account of the psyche in crisis. Tristimania tells the story of a devastating year-long episode of manic depression, culminating in a long solo pilgrimage across Spain. Recording the experience of mania as has rarely been done before, Jay Griffiths shows how the condition is at once terrifying and also profoundly creative, both tricking and treating the psyche.

"If this book can befriend just one person in that terrifying loneliness, it will be worth writing."​

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Reviews and Endorsements:

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"Funny, honest, iridescent, ecstatic... Such rare lucidity and honesty make Tristimania a gripping book and an important one" - Daily Telegraph

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"Profoundly poetic. A glimpse of madness from inside the eye of the storm. Griffiths always writes so vividly... Tristimania strikes the reader like a punch to the throat; here is all the rawness of psychic pain, torn out and laid bare... both the terror and the seductive glitter of a manic dpisode" - Observer

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"An education in the history, mythology and poetics of madness, in all its wildness and glaring neon. Griffiths is a high-wire writer... An exciting and original thinker, her writing shimmers" - New Statesman

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"Unflinchingly honest... Griffiths offers readers a deep submergence in rich, creative language and fascinating insights into this profound and mysterious disease" - Booklist

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"Beautiful, brave and moving" - John Burnside

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"A book of terrible beauty; a dazzling testament to the moral and literary power of brokenness. I cried, shivered, and then laughed in gratitude for Griffiths' sheer bloody nerve" - Charles Foster

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"A searing account of what it can feel like to be swallowed up by a major mental illness" - Iain McGilchrist

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"Griffiths invites us to follow her down the rabbit hole of the human mind... Her unique gifts of language and wit are utterly captivating" - Nikolai Fraiture, The Strokes​​​