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Winona Ryder played Susannah Kaysen in the film of Kaysen’s memoir, Girl, Interrupted. Columbia Pictures/IMDB

Girl, Interrupted interrogates how women are ‘mad’ when they refuse to conform – 30 years on, this memoir is still important

Why was Susanna Kaysen really hospitalised? Her memoir Girl, Interrupted turns 30 this year. It investigates whether she was ‘mad’, or medicalised for a ‘chaotic’ life that defied gender norms.
Dostoyevsky’s story ‘The Double’ explores the uncanny theme of a replica of oneself, but today’s literary foes are often amorphous ones like environmental degradation. (Shutterstock)

Fiction and memoirs were covering health way before the COVID-19 pandemic

Beyond the ‘literature of madness,’ the narratives about mental and physical health published today explore the interdependence of bodies and their environments.

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