Strangers to Ourselves

Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

De: Rachel Aviv

Narrado por: Andi Arndt

One of the top ten books of the year at The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vulture/New York magazine
A best book of the year at Los Angeles Times, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Vogue, Kirkus
An Indigo Best Book of the Year

The acclaimed, award-winning New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv offers a groundbreaking exploration of mental illness and the mind, and illuminates the startling connections between diagnosis and identity.

In Strangers to Ourselves, a powerful and gripping debut, Rachel Aviv raises fundamental questions about how we understand ourselves in periods of crisis and distress. Drawing on deep, original reporting as well as unpublished journals and memoirs, Aviv writes about people who have come up against the limits of psychiatric explanations for who they are. She follows an Indian woman, celebrated as a saint, who lives in healing temples in Kerala; an incarcerated mother vying for her children’s forgiveness after recovering from psychosis; a man who devotes his life to seeking revenge upon his psychoanalysts; and an affluent young woman who, after a decade of defining herself through her diagnosis, decides to go off her meds because she doesn’t know who she is without them. Animated by a profound sense of empathy, Aviv’s exploration is refracted through her own account of living in a hospital ward at the age of six and meeting a fellow patient with whom her life runs parallel—until it no longer does.

Aviv asks how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape their course in our lives. Challenging the way we understand and talk about illness, her account is a testament to the porousness and resilience of the mind.

©2022 Rachel Aviv (P)2022 Penguin Random House Canada

Reseñas de la Crítica

Named one of the best books of 2022 by Vogue • NPR • The New York Times Book Review • Kirkus Reviews • New York Magazine • TIME • Daily Hive • LA Times • The Vulture • The New Yorker • The Wall Street Journal • The Washington Post • The Winnipeg Free Press • Indigo

Shortlisted for the 2023 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize

"Intimate and revelatory . . . attuned to subtlety and complexity . . . This isn't an anti-psychiatry book— Aviv is too aware of the specifics of any situation to succumb to anything so sweeping and polemical . . . a book-length demonstration of Aviv's extraordinary ability to hold space for the 'uncertainty, mysteries and doubts' of others." —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

"One of the pleasures of this book is its resistance to a clear and comforting verdict, its desire to dwell in unknowing. At every step, Aviv is nuanced and perceptive, probing cultural differences and alert to ambiguity, always filling in the fine-grain details. Extracting a remarkable amount of information from archival material as well as living interview subjects, she brings all of these people to life, even the two whom she never met." —Jordan Kisner, The Atlantic

"The strength of Strangers to Ourselves is in its engrossing case studies, which contribute vivid anecdotes to this ongoing conversation about the complex and perplexing nature of the mind . . . as typically excellent as Aviv's magazine journalism, viscerally rendered and thoughtful portraits that slide into meditations on the mind." —Kate Knibbs, Wired