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The Madness

A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD

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The Madness

By: Fergal Keane
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BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK An Irish Times book of the year 2022

A powerful, probing book about PTSD.

As a journalist Keane has covered conflict and brutality across the world for more than thirty years, from Rwanda, Sudan, South Africa, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and many more. Driven by an irresistible compulsion to be where the night is darkest, he made a name for reporting with humanity and empathy from places where death and serious injury were not abstractions, and tragedy often just a moment’s bad luck away.

But all this time he struggled not to be overwhelmed by another story, his acute ‘complex post-traumatic stress disorder’, a condition arising from exposure to multiple instances of trauma experienced over a long period. This condition has caused him to suffer a number of mental breakdowns and hospitalisations. Despite this, and countless promises to do otherwise, he has gone back to the wars again and again.

Why?

In this powerful and intensely personal book, Keane interrogates what it is that draws him to the wars, what keeps him there and offers a reckoning of the damage done.

PTSD affects people from all walks of life. Trauma can be found in many places, not just war. Keane’s book speaks to the struggle of all who are trying to recover from injury, addiction and mental breakdown. It is a survivor’s story drawn from lived experience, told with honesty, courage and an open heart.

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Critic reviews

Praise for The Madness
‘Keane has not just the courage to risk death so that the most important stories can be told, as well as the eye to tell them with vivid subtlety, but also the humility to reveal the havoc that this task visits on the beholder’ Spectator
‘A brutally honest exploration of what motivates Keane to keep reporting on atrocities despite the toll on his mental health… Gentle but unflinching’ Guardian, Book of the Day
‘The Madness is engaging without resorting to sensation. Fluent prose follows the decline of the political situation – and of Keane’s own mental health – in chilling, compelling detail’ Observer
‘Fergal Keane opens doors into closed places. He lets us look inside those complex compartments where fear, anxiety, anger and panic lurk, and he tells a story of being afraid all of his life… beautifully written… This is an important book’ Irish Times
‘Fergal Keane’s torments might be as nothing compared to the sufferings he has observed, and his work can do nothing to alleviate those sufferings, but what chance is there of any restitution, no matter how inadequate it may be, without witnesses to the crimes of the truly guilty?’ TLS
‘The Madness is a heady reckoning with trauma, adrenaline and that mixture of moral courage and compulsion that drives the news cycle, Fergal Keane tells difficult, sometimes horrible truths about the world, but it is the truths he finds about himself that make this book a necessary read’ Annie Enright
‘A really important piece of work’ Susanna Reid, on Good Morning Britain
‘An immensely brave book’ Tortoise
'Powerful, and heartbreaking’ Audrey Magee
‘The Madness is an extraordinary, captivating account of one man's journey in search of truth, as he excavates the human story from chaos’ Elaine Feeney
All stars
Most relevant
An honest and often brutal account of Fergal’s life and career choices as a war correspondent. Beautifully written. Compelling and sometimes difficult to listen, but worth it.

Powerful story, beautifully written

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Fergal Keane has done a great service in writing (and narrating) this brilliantly visceral memoir, predominantly dealing with the insidious nature of addiction and its manifestations, with such brutal and unsparing honesty.
Whilst I found many parts of the book, particularly those describing unspeakably cruel and senseless acts of violence, a difficult listen, as an addict in recovery myself I also found hope and encouragement that Keane has had a significant reprieve from alcohol addiction and has gained much greater agency over his addiction to conflict. To have hopefully put an end to the cycle of active addiction is a tremendous achievement.
Given his choice of career it is no surprise that Keane is highly eloquent, however in this book he is so without mincing his words or conveying a feeling of ego. Every word of his narration carries meaning behind it.
If you are looking for a deeply authentic account of one persons struggle with addiction mixed in with reportage from some of the most extreme trauma zones imaginable, then I suggest you give this book a read (or listen). I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to hear what Fergal Keane has to say.

Eloquence in vehement simplicity

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Such an amazing story from Fergal Keane which provides an insight into a life of trauma, to addiction and then to a place of hope. This book is read by the author himself which makes it all the more impactful! Have listened to it three times in a row. Cannot recommend highly enough.

A must read for everyone

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Great insight of the challenges of PTSD and of Fergals live of being a war correspondent

Just brilliant

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What can I say about this truly terrible and shattering personal memoir?

The suffering is heart breaking beyond imagining and is two-fold. There is t first he sickening brutality of man-made conflict from the Irish famine of Keane’s ancestors, the Troubles of his adolescence and from then on decade after decade of inhuman barbarity meted out in hostilities across the globe right up to the present tragedy in Ukraine. It is to these hostile killing fields that Keane has been addicted since he began as a war correspondent, bringing a succession of fearful events into our horrified conscious minds which we cannot now un-know.

The other part is Keane’s own personal suffering. He understands how his childhood with an alcoholic and sometimes violent father drove him along his own path of destructive addiction – to alcohol (which he finally conquered) and to zones of extreme terror, horror and danger. Well aware that his pursuit of these experiences is madness, and destructive of his fragile mental health (and I’d have thought his family life) , he cannot stop himself from jumping on the next plane to whichever part of the world where ferocious violence has suddenly erupted.

Gentle, loving, keenly perceptive about himself and those around him, Keane is a truly tragic figure cursed with this inescapable ‘madness’ which like some kind of shirt of Nessus drives him into such suffering. His own reading of the book with his soft voice is comfortingly in tune with his lyrical prose.

The pity of war

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