Sigrid Rausing

mayhem

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Mayhem

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Fierce, lyrical, and lucid memoir

A profoundly articulate and harrowing memoir of a family grappling with addiction... I was impressed and moved

A short, intense and moving memoir... a poignant and at times harrowing account that testifies to the resilience of the human spirit

Powerful and spare... her elisions and prevarications have a striking effect

Such a unique and haunting story to tell

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

A deeply felt memorial to a lost brother...a finely written memoir

Riveting, clear-sighted and exceptionally articulate...heartbreaking...her literary and psychoanalytic fluency gives the book an impact that feels arrestingly honest

Touched by its bravery, sincerity and the frequent beauty of the writing

In this slim, stoic memoir... Rausing thoughtfully, painstakingly, works a deep groove into the stubborn surface of certain bedevilling questions: "How do you write about addiction?"... I nodded and sometimes cried. I wanted to invite the author over for tea

Publisher's description.  A courageous and clear-sighted memoir about addiction and its terrible repercussions within a family. In 2012, Hans Rausing, heir to the vast Tetrapak fortune, was pulled over by the police while driving erratically across Wandsworth Bridge. What those police officers eventually found would shock the world...

A Memoir

For years Sigrid Rausing watched helplessly as her brother Hans and his wife Eva succumbed to drug addiction. It afflicted a terrible toll on their family, culminating in Eva's tragic early death. As this death led to inquest and media circus, the world looked on in horror, but few understood the suffering endured by the Rausing family. 
 
 In Mayhem, Sigrid explores the collateral damage addiction wreaks on loved ones. Telling her family's story, she examines painful and rarely discussed questions. What is it like to live with addiction in the family? How can you help without hurting the one you love? And what does it mean to survive another's addiction?

A Sunday Times Book of the Year 
 
'Riveting, clear-sighted and exceptionally articulate... Her literary and psychoanalytic fluency gives the book an impact that feels arrestingly honest... Heartbreaking' Daily Telegraph 
 
'An unsparing account of a family destroyed by drugs. Unique and haunting' Sunday Times 
 
'What gives this book its astonishing power is not the guilt, but the intelligence and literary skill' Guardian 
 
'I write, knowing that writing at all may be seen as a betrayal of family; a shaming, exploitative act. Anyone reading this who thinks so, please know that I thought it before you' 
 
For years Sigrid Rausing watched helplessly as her brother Hans and his wife Eva succumbed to drug addiction. It afflicted a terrible toll on their family, culminating in Eva's tragic early death. As this death led to inquest and media circus, the world looked on in horror, but few understood the suffering endured by the Rausing family. 
 
In Mayhem, Sigrid explores the collateral damage addiction wreaks on loved ones. Telling her family's story, she examines painful and rarely discussed questions. What is it like to live with addiction in the family? How can you help without hurting the one you love? And what does it mean to survive another's addiction?

Sigrid Rausing is the editor of Granta magazine and the publisher of Granta Books. She is the author of two previous books: History, Memory, and Identity in Post-Soviet Estonia, and Everything is Wonderful, which was short-listed for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. 
She is an Honorary Fellow of the London School of Economics and of St Antony's College, Oxford. She lives in London.

Mayhem

A Memoir

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