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The Madness : A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD Fergal Keane
An Irish Times book of the year 2022A 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.
272 pages, Paperback
Published November 10, 2022
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December 15, 2022
I did this. Then I did that. I went here. After that I went there. And there too. I saw this and that, and then more and more. But does it mean anything at this stage of the story? By now have you not had proof enough of the state of my reckless, addicted mind? Christ, I am weary writing this, thinking about what it says of who I was in those days. But that is the point: clarity only emerges for me as I set this down. Not every place told an easily defined story of psychological disintegration, but they would accumulate and set my face towards a reckoning.
—Fergal Keane
Moral wounds have this peculiarity – they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.
—Alexander Dumas
I first encountered Fergal Keane in a 2004 PBS Frontline documentary, Ghosts of Rwanda. He was Africa correspondent for the BBC and travelled into the central African country in July 1994 during the genocide. The Frontline episode includes footage of him and his crew making their way along a narrow, densely overgrown road to a church where Tutsis who sought sanctuary were massacred by Hutus. After watching the film, I read Keane’s Season of Blood in which he tells about his time in Rwanda. It is a harrowing book about an experience that changed him profoundly.
I’ve thought a lot about those who lived through the genocide, including General Romeo Dallaire and the UN peacekeepers sent to Rwanda on a mission that was doomed to fail, given the lack of troops, resources, and the apathy of the West. I had never deeply considered the impact of this atrocity on the journalists who were there and those who report from one war zone after another. According to Keane, “the idea that the mental disturbances of war might extend to journalists is comparatively recent.” The first major study of war reporters and PTSD appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2002. 25% of the group of journalists studied experienced PTSD, a lifetime prevalence rate similar to that of combat veterans.
I recently came upon a 2013 NPR interview in which Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning American journalist/war correspondent and self-described “adrenaline junkie,” commented on the psychology of those who report from conflict zones:
Foreign . . . war photographers, war correspondents are a small fraternity, and they tend to leap from conflict to conflict to conflict . . . And the longer you do that, the less able you are to fit in at home or even in a society not at war. I think that, you know, soldiers call it a combat high. That’s very real. Those adrenaline rushes become something you need. They pervert, deform you. And I think it is much— I've not used drugs, but—I think it is much like an addiction, a drug addiction. And you go back to an environment where you can get those kinds of rushes, but as importantly where you're surrounded by people who have the same kind of pathology.
The Madness, an informative and often wrenching memoir, confirms Hedges’ remarks and then some. Keane opens up about his experiences in many conflict zones, including South Africa, Rwanda, Kosovo, the DRC, Sudan, and Ukraine. Some of these stories concern the tragic loss of colleagues. His main focus in the book, however, is his own mental health: his alcoholism, breakdowns, and diagnosis of PTSD.
Keane appears to have been genetically vulnerable to alcoholism. Éamonn, his father, was addicted. He desperately wanted to give up drink, could not, and died in his mid-sixties after years of alcohol abuse and multiple hospitalizations. As a child of eight, Fergal secretively drank some cider and experienced “an otherworldly sense of relief.” Respectful of family members’ privacy, he provides scant detail about his early home life but makes clear that his childhood, like that of many who grow up with an alcoholic parent, was chaotic and dysfunctional. He writes that he’s been afraid all his life and that, as a boy, he lived in fear that his family would fall apart and he’d be put in an Irish industrial school. Perpetually anxious and hyper-vigilant, he was bullied by classmates for his facial tics and ultimately became deeply invested in the idea of one day proving he could be brave.
Keane drank intermittently as a teenager, but when he was 21, a girlfriend, concerned about his heavy drinking and the sadness that seemed to be fuelling it, referred him to a physician in Cork. The doctor told Keane he could never drink again or it would eventually kill him. Keane was prescribed antidepressants, took them, and abstained from alcohol for several years, but he returned to drinking with a glass of champagne in celebration of a new job. His subsequent career path did him no favours. War correspondents are generally a hard-drinking lot. Self-medication and temporary emotional-anesthetization with alcohol are common.
Keane is interested in the question of intergenerational trauma, an emerging scientific field based in epigenetics—the study of the ways in which environmental factors, including traumatic experiences, can turn genes on and off. There is some evidence that genes altered by trauma can be passed on to offspring. Keane was advised by an expert that given the newness of this field, it might be more fruitful for him to focus instead on cultural factors that can create greater vulnerability to psychological trauma. Hence, the early chapters of his book explore some of the turbulent history of Ireland, particularly of County Kerry where his people are from. He speculates that the Famine of the 1800s (which his grandmother’s elders survived and talked about), the Easter Rising, Civil War, and the protracted sectarian violence of the twentieth century have all contributed to the shaping of his character. Born in 1961, Keane grew up with “a consuming curiosity about the world,” a love of history, an “instinctive loathing of bullies,” and “an irresistible compulsion to be where the night was darkest.” It’s clear he was an emotionally wounded person with a compensatory need to demonstrate bravery and fearlessness. Given all these factors, his career choice—reporting from dangerous conflict zones—should perhaps not surprise.
The author’s mental health issues were in evidence from the beginning of his foreign-correspondent work. In 1990 when he was 29, he had his first breakdown at Heathrow Airport while waiting to board a plane to South Africa. Experiencing intense mental anguish, he phoned home crying and barely able to speak, and left his ticket and money belt at a kiosk. When these were stolen, the BBC came through with assistance. He flew to South Africa, but required hospitalization in Johannesburg and then at home. Institutional memory is short, however. He got on with assignments after this first nervous collapse, but he’d suffer periodic breakdowns for the next 25 years. He’d come to learn that confusion, memory lapses, and an overall inability to keep pace with the world were the prodrome of such episodes. Keane believes in retrospect that he had PTSD from childhood. By the time he was actually diagnosed in 2010, his case was a complex one. It had arisen “from exposure to multiple instances of trauma, experienced over a long period” and was consequently significantly harder to treat than a case resulting from a single traumatic episode. I suspect that the addictive rush that Chris Hedges mentions, the alienation from normal work and family life, as well as deeply ingrained behaviour patterns that involved pushing on regardless of distress further complicated matters.
Keane had to be hospitalized and have extended time off work for both of his mental health issues. He was treated for his addiction in 1999 and has been sober for over twenty years. However, it took him much longer to recognize he was “in the grip of a compulsion” more powerful than alcoholism. He could not stop himself from returning to the wars and placing himself in the most dangerous situations. Based on what I know about post-traumatic stress disorder, this really surprised me. Sufferers are typically highly avoidant of situations that bear any resemblance to the traumatic event(s) that precipitated their condition. While Keane did, at a certain point, make clear to the BBC that he would neither cover nor return to Rwanda, until fairly recently he continued to go to other violent and volatile places.
Keane tells many stories about the hot spots he’s reported from. He also considers the nature of evil and provides cynical but illuminating commentary on the entire journalistic enterprise. As might be expected, a significant part of the book is dedicated to describing how he attempted to run from, then wrestle with, his demons, including his hospitalizations, his interactions with his Alcoholics Anonymous advisor and his psychotherapist, a specialist in the treatment of PTSD.
Some of the most moving parts of this rich, intense, and thought-provoking memoir concern his efforts to transform his personal narrative about Rwanda by thinking about the goodness, kindness, and deep humanity of people living in the direst and most distressing conditions. He writes warmly and lovingly of Anatoly and Svetlana Kosse, a Ukrainian couple in their sixties living in the bombed-out village of Piski in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine (whom he met after war began in the eastern part of the country in 2014). He also describes going to visit the novelist, poet, and Rwandan genocide survivor Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse. Her counsel to him came in the form of a poem by French Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo, whose husband was executed in the camp:
Learn to walk and to laugh
Because it would be too senseless
After all
For so many to have died
While you live
Doing nothing with your life.
—Fergal Keane
Moral wounds have this peculiarity – they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.
—Alexander Dumas
I first encountered Fergal Keane in a 2004 PBS Frontline documentary, Ghosts of Rwanda. He was Africa correspondent for the BBC and travelled into the central African country in July 1994 during the genocide. The Frontline episode includes footage of him and his crew making their way along a narrow, densely overgrown road to a church where Tutsis who sought sanctuary were massacred by Hutus. After watching the film, I read Keane’s Season of Blood in which he tells about his time in Rwanda. It is a harrowing book about an experience that changed him profoundly.
I’ve thought a lot about those who lived through the genocide, including General Romeo Dallaire and the UN peacekeepers sent to Rwanda on a mission that was doomed to fail, given the lack of troops, resources, and the apathy of the West. I had never deeply considered the impact of this atrocity on the journalists who were there and those who report from one war zone after another. According to Keane, “the idea that the mental disturbances of war might extend to journalists is comparatively recent.” The first major study of war reporters and PTSD appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 2002. 25% of the group of journalists studied experienced PTSD, a lifetime prevalence rate similar to that of combat veterans.
I recently came upon a 2013 NPR interview in which Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning American journalist/war correspondent and self-described “adrenaline junkie,” commented on the psychology of those who report from conflict zones:
Foreign . . . war photographers, war correspondents are a small fraternity, and they tend to leap from conflict to conflict to conflict . . . And the longer you do that, the less able you are to fit in at home or even in a society not at war. I think that, you know, soldiers call it a combat high. That’s very real. Those adrenaline rushes become something you need. They pervert, deform you. And I think it is much— I've not used drugs, but—I think it is much like an addiction, a drug addiction. And you go back to an environment where you can get those kinds of rushes, but as importantly where you're surrounded by people who have the same kind of pathology.
The Madness, an informative and often wrenching memoir, confirms Hedges’ remarks and then some. Keane opens up about his experiences in many conflict zones, including South Africa, Rwanda, Kosovo, the DRC, Sudan, and Ukraine. Some of these stories concern the tragic loss of colleagues. His main focus in the book, however, is his own mental health: his alcoholism, breakdowns, and diagnosis of PTSD.
Keane appears to have been genetically vulnerable to alcoholism. Éamonn, his father, was addicted. He desperately wanted to give up drink, could not, and died in his mid-sixties after years of alcohol abuse and multiple hospitalizations. As a child of eight, Fergal secretively drank some cider and experienced “an otherworldly sense of relief.” Respectful of family members’ privacy, he provides scant detail about his early home life but makes clear that his childhood, like that of many who grow up with an alcoholic parent, was chaotic and dysfunctional. He writes that he’s been afraid all his life and that, as a boy, he lived in fear that his family would fall apart and he’d be put in an Irish industrial school. Perpetually anxious and hyper-vigilant, he was bullied by classmates for his facial tics and ultimately became deeply invested in the idea of one day proving he could be brave.
Keane drank intermittently as a teenager, but when he was 21, a girlfriend, concerned about his heavy drinking and the sadness that seemed to be fuelling it, referred him to a physician in Cork. The doctor told Keane he could never drink again or it would eventually kill him. Keane was prescribed antidepressants, took them, and abstained from alcohol for several years, but he returned to drinking with a glass of champagne in celebration of a new job. His subsequent career path did him no favours. War correspondents are generally a hard-drinking lot. Self-medication and temporary emotional-anesthetization with alcohol are common.
Keane is interested in the question of intergenerational trauma, an emerging scientific field based in epigenetics—the study of the ways in which environmental factors, including traumatic experiences, can turn genes on and off. There is some evidence that genes altered by trauma can be passed on to offspring. Keane was advised by an expert that given the newness of this field, it might be more fruitful for him to focus instead on cultural factors that can create greater vulnerability to psychological trauma. Hence, the early chapters of his book explore some of the turbulent history of Ireland, particularly of County Kerry where his people are from. He speculates that the Famine of the 1800s (which his grandmother’s elders survived and talked about), the Easter Rising, Civil War, and the protracted sectarian violence of the twentieth century have all contributed to the shaping of his character. Born in 1961, Keane grew up with “a consuming curiosity about the world,” a love of history, an “instinctive loathing of bullies,” and “an irresistible compulsion to be where the night was darkest.” It’s clear he was an emotionally wounded person with a compensatory need to demonstrate bravery and fearlessness. Given all these factors, his career choice—reporting from dangerous conflict zones—should perhaps not surprise.
The author’s mental health issues were in evidence from the beginning of his foreign-correspondent work. In 1990 when he was 29, he had his first breakdown at Heathrow Airport while waiting to board a plane to South Africa. Experiencing intense mental anguish, he phoned home crying and barely able to speak, and left his ticket and money belt at a kiosk. When these were stolen, the BBC came through with assistance. He flew to South Africa, but required hospitalization in Johannesburg and then at home. Institutional memory is short, however. He got on with assignments after this first nervous collapse, but he’d suffer periodic breakdowns for the next 25 years. He’d come to learn that confusion, memory lapses, and an overall inability to keep pace with the world were the prodrome of such episodes. Keane believes in retrospect that he had PTSD from childhood. By the time he was actually diagnosed in 2010, his case was a complex one. It had arisen “from exposure to multiple instances of trauma, experienced over a long period” and was consequently significantly harder to treat than a case resulting from a single traumatic episode. I suspect that the addictive rush that Chris Hedges mentions, the alienation from normal work and family life, as well as deeply ingrained behaviour patterns that involved pushing on regardless of distress further complicated matters.
Keane had to be hospitalized and have extended time off work for both of his mental health issues. He was treated for his addiction in 1999 and has been sober for over twenty years. However, it took him much longer to recognize he was “in the grip of a compulsion” more powerful than alcoholism. He could not stop himself from returning to the wars and placing himself in the most dangerous situations. Based on what I know about post-traumatic stress disorder, this really surprised me. Sufferers are typically highly avoidant of situations that bear any resemblance to the traumatic event(s) that precipitated their condition. While Keane did, at a certain point, make clear to the BBC that he would neither cover nor return to Rwanda, until fairly recently he continued to go to other violent and volatile places.
Keane tells many stories about the hot spots he’s reported from. He also considers the nature of evil and provides cynical but illuminating commentary on the entire journalistic enterprise. As might be expected, a significant part of the book is dedicated to describing how he attempted to run from, then wrestle with, his demons, including his hospitalizations, his interactions with his Alcoholics Anonymous advisor and his psychotherapist, a specialist in the treatment of PTSD.
Some of the most moving parts of this rich, intense, and thought-provoking memoir concern his efforts to transform his personal narrative about Rwanda by thinking about the goodness, kindness, and deep humanity of people living in the direst and most distressing conditions. He writes warmly and lovingly of Anatoly and Svetlana Kosse, a Ukrainian couple in their sixties living in the bombed-out village of Piski in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine (whom he met after war began in the eastern part of the country in 2014). He also describes going to visit the novelist, poet, and Rwandan genocide survivor Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse. Her counsel to him came in the form of a poem by French Auschwitz survivor Charlotte Delbo, whose husband was executed in the camp:
Learn to walk and to laugh
Because it would be too senseless
After all
For so many to have died
While you live
Doing nothing with your life.
Read
October 17, 2023”This book is a chronicle of pain, not only mine.“
I have to admit to being a bit of a news junkie. Which is possibly a contributing factor to being an insomniac at times. I’m interested in what’s going on in the world, and like to think I’m fairly well aware of current events. But in order to gain this awareness, someone has to report on them. And this is by no means an easy task. I think that perhaps most of us don’t give too much thought of the person wearing a flak jacket, staring into an often shaky camera with the sound of bullets being shot in the background and explosions in the distance.
Why would anyone want to be a war correspondent? And yet without them, how do we learn the truth of what’s going on in the world?
”There is no unseeing.“
Fergal Keane had a difficult childhood in the Ireland still feeling the after effects of The Troubles. With an alcoholic father who could be charming, and an emotionally distant mother, he lived like a ghost, barely breathing for fear of bringing himself to the attention of the parents he loved dearly. School was no better, with the brothers and priests handing our corporal punishment freely, for no other reason than they could. Many children got more than corporal punishment.
This set him on the path of choosing journalism, and then reporting from front lines to prove his worth. Especially to himself.
Think of a hotspot in the last thirty years and he was there filing stories on it. South Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Ukraine. The genocide in Rwanda nearly resulted in a complete mental and physical breakdown. The atrocities he witnessed, the near escapes, and survivor guilt haunted him. He suffered from PTSD. Was a functioning alcoholic. And had several stints in various institutions. The downtime when he returned home, he was unable to sleep and struggled to be a husband and father. To be “normal” in a society, when he had witnessed events that were anything but.
When he first started reporting he did not know or understand what he was suffering from. The madness that caused such abject pain. Until he found a few counselors and psychologists that thought outside the square and helped him to slowly mend. Though the emotional scars remain.
Despite his best efforts to quit the front line, he was always pulled back. The compulsion something he found difficult to overthrow.
"I did this. Then I did that. I went here. After that I went there. And there too. I saw this and that, and then more and more. But does it mean anything..."
I highlighted so many sections of this book. Sometimes entire pages. That’s how much it affected me. It took me a long time to finish reading this. Several months. It was simply one that I could only read in small portions, as it’s so incredibly affecting.
Fergal Keane not only talks of his struggles, but tells us about the friends and colleagues he met along the way. About what a special bond they formed, stronger than most workplaces. And the maiming and killing of this same circle, as unfortunately this is the nature of the beast. We don’t think much about that either, do we? That people lose their lives reporting from places of conflict.
Hats off to all these amazing people who bring us these stories that we'd prefer didn't exist.
There are moments of reprieve, and some of bittersweet beauty. How the sound of birdsong and insects returns when shelling stops. People escaping with family pets when the siege in Lyiv, Ukraine first began. A couple in their 70s refusing to leave their home in Pinsk, Ukraine, looking after their honeybees and attending to their vegetable garden. Baking bread. Anatoly and Svetlana. I will never forget reading about them. Offering Fergal a home cooked meal baked with love, a friendship forged under extraordinary circumstances. It broke my heart as I smiled at their generosity of spirit and lack of hatred.
It’s a strange thing. I recently saw an interview Fergal Keane was conducting on one of my preferred news channels. I was busy doing chores after dinner and the TV was on in the background. I heard his voice and instinctively knew it was him. That calm brogue. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other reports of his I’ve seen over the years, and not given a thought to what he was going through to do so.
Another book that left me with this level of discomfort and unease was Francisco Cantú’s The Line Becomes A River. Another book filled with immense intensity. To me, it’s unfathomable what people are capable of. And continue to be capable of.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Please read the review of this book by fellow reviewer Canadian Reader. It is sensational and moved me.
The reason I’ve not given this book a star rating is because it deserves to be read regardless of how many stars it has been “awarded”. It is brutal and forthright in its honesty, and incredibly raw. When you read something like this, truly, only the stars in the sky are the ones that matter.
”This book is written in memory of those who died in the wars, and for those broken in body and mind.“
I have to admit to being a bit of a news junkie. Which is possibly a contributing factor to being an insomniac at times. I’m interested in what’s going on in the world, and like to think I’m fairly well aware of current events. But in order to gain this awareness, someone has to report on them. And this is by no means an easy task. I think that perhaps most of us don’t give too much thought of the person wearing a flak jacket, staring into an often shaky camera with the sound of bullets being shot in the background and explosions in the distance.
Why would anyone want to be a war correspondent? And yet without them, how do we learn the truth of what’s going on in the world?
”There is no unseeing.“
Fergal Keane had a difficult childhood in the Ireland still feeling the after effects of The Troubles. With an alcoholic father who could be charming, and an emotionally distant mother, he lived like a ghost, barely breathing for fear of bringing himself to the attention of the parents he loved dearly. School was no better, with the brothers and priests handing our corporal punishment freely, for no other reason than they could. Many children got more than corporal punishment.
This set him on the path of choosing journalism, and then reporting from front lines to prove his worth. Especially to himself.
Think of a hotspot in the last thirty years and he was there filing stories on it. South Africa, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Ukraine. The genocide in Rwanda nearly resulted in a complete mental and physical breakdown. The atrocities he witnessed, the near escapes, and survivor guilt haunted him. He suffered from PTSD. Was a functioning alcoholic. And had several stints in various institutions. The downtime when he returned home, he was unable to sleep and struggled to be a husband and father. To be “normal” in a society, when he had witnessed events that were anything but.
When he first started reporting he did not know or understand what he was suffering from. The madness that caused such abject pain. Until he found a few counselors and psychologists that thought outside the square and helped him to slowly mend. Though the emotional scars remain.
Despite his best efforts to quit the front line, he was always pulled back. The compulsion something he found difficult to overthrow.
"I did this. Then I did that. I went here. After that I went there. And there too. I saw this and that, and then more and more. But does it mean anything..."
I highlighted so many sections of this book. Sometimes entire pages. That’s how much it affected me. It took me a long time to finish reading this. Several months. It was simply one that I could only read in small portions, as it’s so incredibly affecting.
Fergal Keane not only talks of his struggles, but tells us about the friends and colleagues he met along the way. About what a special bond they formed, stronger than most workplaces. And the maiming and killing of this same circle, as unfortunately this is the nature of the beast. We don’t think much about that either, do we? That people lose their lives reporting from places of conflict.
Hats off to all these amazing people who bring us these stories that we'd prefer didn't exist.
There are moments of reprieve, and some of bittersweet beauty. How the sound of birdsong and insects returns when shelling stops. People escaping with family pets when the siege in Lyiv, Ukraine first began. A couple in their 70s refusing to leave their home in Pinsk, Ukraine, looking after their honeybees and attending to their vegetable garden. Baking bread. Anatoly and Svetlana. I will never forget reading about them. Offering Fergal a home cooked meal baked with love, a friendship forged under extraordinary circumstances. It broke my heart as I smiled at their generosity of spirit and lack of hatred.
It’s a strange thing. I recently saw an interview Fergal Keane was conducting on one of my preferred news channels. I was busy doing chores after dinner and the TV was on in the background. I heard his voice and instinctively knew it was him. That calm brogue. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other reports of his I’ve seen over the years, and not given a thought to what he was going through to do so.
Another book that left me with this level of discomfort and unease was Francisco Cantú’s The Line Becomes A River. Another book filled with immense intensity. To me, it’s unfathomable what people are capable of. And continue to be capable of.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Please read the review of this book by fellow reviewer Canadian Reader. It is sensational and moved me.
The reason I’ve not given this book a star rating is because it deserves to be read regardless of how many stars it has been “awarded”. It is brutal and forthright in its honesty, and incredibly raw. When you read something like this, truly, only the stars in the sky are the ones that matter.
”This book is written in memory of those who died in the wars, and for those broken in body and mind.“
December 8, 2022
4.5 rounded up
Keane has written an incredibly powerful reflection on his career as a war correspondent - he became a household name in the UK for his reporting on the Rwandan genocide in 1994 - and the PTSD he developed as result of his profession. This is a highly personal and moving reflection on a life, and one of the best memoirs I've read this year. Highly recommended.
Keane has written an incredibly powerful reflection on his career as a war correspondent - he became a household name in the UK for his reporting on the Rwandan genocide in 1994 - and the PTSD he developed as result of his profession. This is a highly personal and moving reflection on a life, and one of the best memoirs I've read this year. Highly recommended.
Read
March 22, 2023Honestly it's just what it says on the tin. Keane is a great writer of course, but reading this is a little strange because he was reporting on war when I was a child, just at the time things really stick in your memory. I remember him on tv reporting live from Rwanda and Bosnia and Chechnya, and here he writes about how he was falling to pieces from the trauma of war at the time and also later. It's not a self-indulgent memoir though - he's scrupulous about explaining how he made many of the choices that led to his having PTSD, and he writes warmly, generously, of everyone who helped him along the way. And by the bye he gives you a solid dose of history: the Irish Revolution, the Troubles, the Rwandan massacre, the progressive invasion of Ukraine, the civil war in Yugoslavia and later Bosnia. I learned a fair bit.
March 28, 2023
A very special book written by a very special man, and one of the best books I've read in years. Fergal Keane has the unique ability to write beautifully without complicating the language. Pair that with a brutally honest account of PTSD and addiction against the backdrop of a war journalists experience over the past 30 years and the result is something unforgettable. I can only imagine the comfort this book brings to others who have suffered in similar ways.
August 30, 2023
Fergal Keane writes about despair, trauma, addiction, and the sheer awfulness and horror of what war does to human beings: protagonists, antagonists, victims, and observers. The lyrical nature of his writing lures the reader, compelling you to observe second hand the horrors of his experience, unremitting as it is. His writing exposes the trauma to his core mixed with meaning making and a search for understanding as to why he is compelled to go to war. This is a riveting read spanning the conflicts of my life time helping me to make sense of my father’s experience of war and addiction, with its concomitant impact on the family. It also mirrored my research into trauma, an unexpected confirmation of my findings from a different angle.
November 18, 2022
This is an excellent memoir. Because of the subject matter covered it can be a difficult read at times. It is very honest and covers the topic of addiction and childhood trauma very effectively.
June 6, 2025
I can only give this 5 stars. What an incredible memoir, written with such honesty, reflection, and heart.
I have known the work of Fergal Keane for most of my life. I would watch his reports from war-torn countries, noting the importance of his reporting on the human cost of war. To read this memoir, laying out his own human cost, has profoundly affected me and given me an unparalleled insight into the mind of a war reporter.
I am beyond impressed with the honesty on display throughout this book, and I would strongly encourage everyone to read it. The insight into Keane’s own mind can be transferred to ourselves as readers, and this has certainly enabled me to reflect on my own life as a result.
I have known the work of Fergal Keane for most of my life. I would watch his reports from war-torn countries, noting the importance of his reporting on the human cost of war. To read this memoir, laying out his own human cost, has profoundly affected me and given me an unparalleled insight into the mind of a war reporter.
I am beyond impressed with the honesty on display throughout this book, and I would strongly encourage everyone to read it. The insight into Keane’s own mind can be transferred to ourselves as readers, and this has certainly enabled me to reflect on my own life as a result.
May 23, 2024
I was a bit hesitant about reading this, I worried about how upsetting I'd find it. On the contrary when I began it, I was blown away by how Fergal Keane tells his tale. It's totally frank. He explores intergenerational trauma and how this led him to the career of a war reporter.
Becoming addicted to the adrenaline of war, his own mental state starts to get worse and worse. Ptsd is explored and alongside this short histories of the conflicts he reported on and what he saw.
It's an unusual memoir / non fic but a rewarding, well - written read. Totally recommend it.
Becoming addicted to the adrenaline of war, his own mental state starts to get worse and worse. Ptsd is explored and alongside this short histories of the conflicts he reported on and what he saw.
It's an unusual memoir / non fic but a rewarding, well - written read. Totally recommend it.
April 21, 2025
Compelling book. I started reading and then finished the who book, listening as an audiobook. Highly recommend.
January 14, 2023
This is a good book.
Chapter one is terrible and I thought of lobbing the thing out the window. But the prologue was good enough so I persevered. And it was brilliant from then on.
Fascinating. From his childhood in Ireland to reporting in the most terrible zones of conflict in recent times.
I had to do something quickly after some of my reading stints. It is very heavy. The Rwandan genocide in particular.
It’s the most money I’ve ever spent on a book and was not shortchanged. Very well written and compelling.
In conclusion, this is a good book.
Chapter one is terrible and I thought of lobbing the thing out the window. But the prologue was good enough so I persevered. And it was brilliant from then on.
Fascinating. From his childhood in Ireland to reporting in the most terrible zones of conflict in recent times.
I had to do something quickly after some of my reading stints. It is very heavy. The Rwandan genocide in particular.
It’s the most money I’ve ever spent on a book and was not shortchanged. Very well written and compelling.
In conclusion, this is a good book.
February 20, 2024
Beautiful writing and lots to think about. Now waiting for AT's momma to post me my Le Carre book 😀
November 27, 2023
The only reason this is four rather than five stars is because I have read a lot of Keane's work and therefore some sections of this book contained information I was already very aware of. It has nothing to do with the quality of the writing, nor the impact, and is just a personal preference. I don't necessarily mind reading about things I have read about before, but in the same context and by the same author it's a little different.
That out of the way, Fergal Keane's books will never stop making me feel like I’ve been thrown into a washing machine on spin cycle. I mean that mostly in a good way.
The thing is, there's a lot in this book that is relevant to me, and therefore it can kind of feel like being absolutely exposed. Being seen in this way is both a pleasant and a frightful experience, and I have to admit that I owe a fair bit of my own progress when it comes to topics such as trauma and identity to Keane's writing. We are both Irish, we are both from unstable families where one parent was addicted to alcohol, and he is a war reporter while I am just beginning a career in photojournalism, where I hope to cover warzones myself. It is indescribably relieving to read what Keane has written here, both about the nature of the work (I always appreciate it when somebody is just straight with me) and also about what it means to go into such a career with the kind of background that we have.
I have read a lot of memoirs by war reporters by now, and something I have been thinking about for some time is the abusive home environment as a microcosm of war. It seems ridiculous to say at first; the two seem incomparable, and yet they have more in common than not. Both environments are ruled by chaos and danger and threat. Both environments leave you feeling helpless and at the mercy of something much bigger than you are; something that cannot be reasoned or bargained with. Both environments involve high stress and adapting to survive, sometimes to the extent where you struggled to go "back" – if you even have a back to go to. In both environments, you have to learn to pick up on clues, body language, subtle shifts in atmosphere, just to avoid catastrophe. I knew this, I suspected it, and yet I worried that I might be guilty of dramatics. It is incredible, then, to see a foreign correspondent as experienced as Keane state that his first war was the one he fought as a child, growing up in the same kind of environment as I did.
As with all his writing, Keane brings a thoughtfulness and honesty to this book that gets to me on a level like no other. I don't know what it is, precisely – probably a combination of his writing style and the things we have in common – but whenever I need advice or a clue as to the right angle to approach something I'm struggling with, I can usually find it in Keane's writing. It takes a lot of nerve to write a memoir so intimate, dealing as it does with things that are either brutally stigmatised or perused by people who have a taste for nasty details; Keane manages to get across the severity of his struggle while keeping it clear, honest, and free of sensationalism. It is a profoundly moving piece of writing, the exact kind of thing I have come to enjoy about his work. On a more specific note, it's good that this information is out here in such an honest and straightforward way – I am under no illusions that this is the risk I am taking going into the career I have chosen, and I appreciate the way writers like Keane allow me to make an informed choice.
Even outside of this highly specific angle, at heart this is a book about trauma, about living with such a thing, about recovery and relapse and making choices. It is well worth a read for anyone who has struggled with such things; Keane’s humanity and empathy in his writing about such topics is something that everyone should see.
That out of the way, Fergal Keane's books will never stop making me feel like I’ve been thrown into a washing machine on spin cycle. I mean that mostly in a good way.
The thing is, there's a lot in this book that is relevant to me, and therefore it can kind of feel like being absolutely exposed. Being seen in this way is both a pleasant and a frightful experience, and I have to admit that I owe a fair bit of my own progress when it comes to topics such as trauma and identity to Keane's writing. We are both Irish, we are both from unstable families where one parent was addicted to alcohol, and he is a war reporter while I am just beginning a career in photojournalism, where I hope to cover warzones myself. It is indescribably relieving to read what Keane has written here, both about the nature of the work (I always appreciate it when somebody is just straight with me) and also about what it means to go into such a career with the kind of background that we have.
I have read a lot of memoirs by war reporters by now, and something I have been thinking about for some time is the abusive home environment as a microcosm of war. It seems ridiculous to say at first; the two seem incomparable, and yet they have more in common than not. Both environments are ruled by chaos and danger and threat. Both environments leave you feeling helpless and at the mercy of something much bigger than you are; something that cannot be reasoned or bargained with. Both environments involve high stress and adapting to survive, sometimes to the extent where you struggled to go "back" – if you even have a back to go to. In both environments, you have to learn to pick up on clues, body language, subtle shifts in atmosphere, just to avoid catastrophe. I knew this, I suspected it, and yet I worried that I might be guilty of dramatics. It is incredible, then, to see a foreign correspondent as experienced as Keane state that his first war was the one he fought as a child, growing up in the same kind of environment as I did.
As with all his writing, Keane brings a thoughtfulness and honesty to this book that gets to me on a level like no other. I don't know what it is, precisely – probably a combination of his writing style and the things we have in common – but whenever I need advice or a clue as to the right angle to approach something I'm struggling with, I can usually find it in Keane's writing. It takes a lot of nerve to write a memoir so intimate, dealing as it does with things that are either brutally stigmatised or perused by people who have a taste for nasty details; Keane manages to get across the severity of his struggle while keeping it clear, honest, and free of sensationalism. It is a profoundly moving piece of writing, the exact kind of thing I have come to enjoy about his work. On a more specific note, it's good that this information is out here in such an honest and straightforward way – I am under no illusions that this is the risk I am taking going into the career I have chosen, and I appreciate the way writers like Keane allow me to make an informed choice.
Even outside of this highly specific angle, at heart this is a book about trauma, about living with such a thing, about recovery and relapse and making choices. It is well worth a read for anyone who has struggled with such things; Keane’s humanity and empathy in his writing about such topics is something that everyone should see.
December 13, 2022
The Madness
By Fergal Keane
Fergal Keane is blessed with a magical pen, under which flowers can blossom, as the Chinese would say. I think he is one of the few journalists who write like a poet. In fact, I think Keane does write poetry. The limpid prose and his unflinching honesty made this book, dealing with difficult subjects of trauma and addiction, so compelling.
The book, part memoir and part war reporting, explores his own demons and the ethics of war reporting. Some war correspondents, himself included, are addicted to the dark glamour of war reporting for its thrill and heroism.
Keane, a veteran journalist with the BBC, is renowned for his dispatches from war-torn zones in South Africa, Rwanda, the Middle East, Iraq and Ukraine. He is particularly good at bringing out the human aspects of the conflicts with novelist attention to detail. He reported the downing of MH 17, noticing the bodies from the Malaysian jet scattered in the sunflower field in Ukraine and a toddler on the roadside, covered by a flimsy sheet.
“I felt guilty that I was acclaimed. But not enough to reject the awards. I needed them. They were my substitute for self-worth,” he confesses.
Among the war-torn regions, one has to mention Rwanda where the author was shocked by the scale and brutality of the genocide: more than half a million Tutsis were killed, often hacked to death, by Hutus.
In 2008, twenty years after first witnessing the horror, he agreed to testify at a Rwanda genocide trial. The ghost from the past caught up with him and pushed him over the edge. He sought help and was diagnosed as a sufferer of PDST – post-trauma stress disorder.
He dives into his family history for the roots of his twin addiction – to alcohol and war reporting. His father was a talented actor, but alcoholic and sometimes violent. His father cast a long shadow in his childhood.
Unlike his father, Keane did manage to stay away from the booze. A few years ago, when he came over for dinner with his adopted Chinese daughter, he brought a pack of non-alcoholic beer. (A couple of bottles are still gathering dust in my kitchen.)
The other addiction proved to be harder to quit. “If I feel self-loathing I start to need to escape to war, the ultimate land of forgetting.”
I had the pleasure of meeting Keane in China some twenty years ago: I served as his fixer while he came to Beijing for a reporting trip. But this was not the case he gave me a free copy and I returned the fabour by promoting the book. I bought my own audio edition. I decided to write this little review because it touched me.
If I had read the book, I am sure it would have been a rewarding experience, but listening to it was very special. Keane read the book himself. Listening to his silvery voice, with an Irish touch, I felt like he was telling me the story from the bottom of his heart. An intimate experience.
Hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
By Fergal Keane
Fergal Keane is blessed with a magical pen, under which flowers can blossom, as the Chinese would say. I think he is one of the few journalists who write like a poet. In fact, I think Keane does write poetry. The limpid prose and his unflinching honesty made this book, dealing with difficult subjects of trauma and addiction, so compelling.
The book, part memoir and part war reporting, explores his own demons and the ethics of war reporting. Some war correspondents, himself included, are addicted to the dark glamour of war reporting for its thrill and heroism.
Keane, a veteran journalist with the BBC, is renowned for his dispatches from war-torn zones in South Africa, Rwanda, the Middle East, Iraq and Ukraine. He is particularly good at bringing out the human aspects of the conflicts with novelist attention to detail. He reported the downing of MH 17, noticing the bodies from the Malaysian jet scattered in the sunflower field in Ukraine and a toddler on the roadside, covered by a flimsy sheet.
“I felt guilty that I was acclaimed. But not enough to reject the awards. I needed them. They were my substitute for self-worth,” he confesses.
Among the war-torn regions, one has to mention Rwanda where the author was shocked by the scale and brutality of the genocide: more than half a million Tutsis were killed, often hacked to death, by Hutus.
In 2008, twenty years after first witnessing the horror, he agreed to testify at a Rwanda genocide trial. The ghost from the past caught up with him and pushed him over the edge. He sought help and was diagnosed as a sufferer of PDST – post-trauma stress disorder.
He dives into his family history for the roots of his twin addiction – to alcohol and war reporting. His father was a talented actor, but alcoholic and sometimes violent. His father cast a long shadow in his childhood.
Unlike his father, Keane did manage to stay away from the booze. A few years ago, when he came over for dinner with his adopted Chinese daughter, he brought a pack of non-alcoholic beer. (A couple of bottles are still gathering dust in my kitchen.)
The other addiction proved to be harder to quit. “If I feel self-loathing I start to need to escape to war, the ultimate land of forgetting.”
I had the pleasure of meeting Keane in China some twenty years ago: I served as his fixer while he came to Beijing for a reporting trip. But this was not the case he gave me a free copy and I returned the fabour by promoting the book. I bought my own audio edition. I decided to write this little review because it touched me.
If I had read the book, I am sure it would have been a rewarding experience, but listening to it was very special. Keane read the book himself. Listening to his silvery voice, with an Irish touch, I felt like he was telling me the story from the bottom of his heart. An intimate experience.
Hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
did-not-finish
September 7, 2025dnf @ 25%, I might come back to it eventually, but right now it's way too heavy for me, I'm not in a well-enough place mentally to read something like this especially about trauma, I don't know what I was thinking. I thought it might be hopeful but it's anything but that. I'm sure it's a great memoir, just way way waaay too heavy for me right now. the first chapter was great and it made me feel like it might be something I'm looking for (heart-wrenching but hopeful in the end) and maybe it is, just not yet? but I'm not willing to put myself through hell for another 6+ hours when I'm already not doing great. again, not the book's fault at all. just not what I'm looking for at the moment.
on a more stylistic note, this was so soooo wordy and dense. filled with names, people, footnotes (!!!!), and so so so many details that I had a very hard time following what was even the point of certain paragraphs/chapters or where the author was going with certain memories. at one point I thought we would be talking about him but all of a sudden he started talking about generational trauma and Potato Famine and his grandmother? which is fine in and of itself but the way the book was formatted (or the audiobook) was very hard to keep track of (at least for me personally). the fact that I had already had a hard time even understanding his accent made it impossible for me to keep listening. it's entirely on me but I just couldn't keep reading it even after slowing down the audiobook.
on a more stylistic note, this was so soooo wordy and dense. filled with names, people, footnotes (!!!!), and so so so many details that I had a very hard time following what was even the point of certain paragraphs/chapters or where the author was going with certain memories. at one point I thought we would be talking about him but all of a sudden he started talking about generational trauma and Potato Famine and his grandmother? which is fine in and of itself but the way the book was formatted (or the audiobook) was very hard to keep track of (at least for me personally). the fact that I had already had a hard time even understanding his accent made it impossible for me to keep listening. it's entirely on me but I just couldn't keep reading it even after slowing down the audiobook.
September 15, 2023
The author wrote this book to better understand himself. His early years and background created the anvil and his life choices to become a war correspondent were the hammer. The memoir reeks of the quote that life can only be lived forward and understood backwards.
I questioned how much control the author really had over his choices given the unconscious drive to put himself in dangerous situations. The destructive cycles are easy to hide under layers of heroic ideation and real world cynicism.
The author's growing self awareness is admirable and you feel that he doesn't answer the original question of where does our trauma really come from, but he does provide a guide as to how it can be dealt with
I questioned how much control the author really had over his choices given the unconscious drive to put himself in dangerous situations. The destructive cycles are easy to hide under layers of heroic ideation and real world cynicism.
The author's growing self awareness is admirable and you feel that he doesn't answer the original question of where does our trauma really come from, but he does provide a guide as to how it can be dealt with
March 23, 2025
After reading an article in The Times about this journalist and his mental health struggles, in particular with PTSD, and realising that he'd written this book, I had to borrow it from the library. I'm already a chapter in and he has a very good writing style.
23/3/2025: In fact, I couldn't put it down! It is an amazing read. It details the different wars and trouble spots he was reporting on, interspersed with his struggles with alcoholism, depression and PTSD. He is brutally honest and it is hardly surprising that the horrors he witnessed had an impact on his mental health. The descriptions of the Rwanda genocide are particularly horrifying. He also explores the difficulties in his childhood as a contributory factor along with the traumas in his family history with the Irish troubles and even going back to the Irish Famine.
I feel ashamed to say that I've watched news reports from war zones without giving a second thought to the impact on the journalists doing the reporting. I have a new respect for what they do.
23/3/2025: In fact, I couldn't put it down! It is an amazing read. It details the different wars and trouble spots he was reporting on, interspersed with his struggles with alcoholism, depression and PTSD. He is brutally honest and it is hardly surprising that the horrors he witnessed had an impact on his mental health. The descriptions of the Rwanda genocide are particularly horrifying. He also explores the difficulties in his childhood as a contributory factor along with the traumas in his family history with the Irish troubles and even going back to the Irish Famine.
I feel ashamed to say that I've watched news reports from war zones without giving a second thought to the impact on the journalists doing the reporting. I have a new respect for what they do.
December 2, 2022
A gripping memoir of war reporting and it's after-effects on the mind and body. This is also life as an alcoholic and PTSD sufferer. The development of PTSD in childhood. "If there is a darkness in you, an obsessive, a compulsive, f-ed up part of you, war will find it and carry you to places most people would never dream of going. And it will keep you going."
"Childhood gave me the talent for reading danger. It also gave me the magic trick of seeming to be in one place, but being in another place, being another person, entirely: I could be a hero in my mind."
This was at times very tough to read.
Cambridgeshire library
"Childhood gave me the talent for reading danger. It also gave me the magic trick of seeming to be in one place, but being in another place, being another person, entirely: I could be a hero in my mind."
This was at times very tough to read.
Cambridgeshire library
September 17, 2023
I heard an abridged version of this on Radio 4 in the UK otherwise it is not a book I would have normally read, but I enjoyed listening to the author tell this story so sought out the book to read in full. I particularly enjoyed his sections on the Irish famine and his grandmother’s involvement in the Irish uprising in the 1920’s and how he connected these things to ongoing generational trauma within his family and how this may have primed him to seek out reporting from conflict zones around the world. Moving and thought provoking.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 1, 2025
The Madness by BBC journalist Fergal Keane is one of the most extraordinary memoirs of trauma I’ve ever read. A renowned war correspondent, Fergal has captured the intersection of PTSD, moral injury and addiction in a way that left me breathless at times. My heart literally ached. I hope many people read Fergal’s book. In an era when men in public life thrive on fakery, Fergal has stripped himself bare. The Madness is a truly magnificent book.
January 15, 2023
An incredibly powerful memoir focussed on the causes and effects of his PTSD. Really interesting content about inter-generational inherited trauma, experiences with Alcoholics Anonymous and addiction rehabilitation centres and vivid difficult to listen to parts on what he witnessed whilst reporting on wars.
July 25, 2023
Not an easy read, in view of the subject matter, but it is perfectly titled. Here you have the madness of war, hatred and addiction. Fergal Keane brings an unstinting honesty to his story of the addictive personality he inherited from his family, which goes far beyond alcohol and drugs, in driving him to seek out and report upon war and upheaval in some of most dangerous countries in the world.
December 7, 2024
I enjoyed understanding how his story of ptsd was laid down from childhood trauma, which in turn drove him in to war zones . But the descriptions of war didn’t interest me as action films don’t interest me. I couldn’t connect with the human stories behind the war .His long lasting ptsd could of been his barrier to communicating the raw emotion of war that I was expecting.
March 1, 2023
A big help
If you or someone you care about has PTSD this book will help you understand a little better. Over the years Fergal has been exposed to more trauma than most and he talks openly about its effects
If you or someone you care about has PTSD this book will help you understand a little better. Over the years Fergal has been exposed to more trauma than most and he talks openly about its effects
June 30, 2023
A grim, brutal, powerful and personal story of the impact of war on the victims, perpetrators and witnesses. The context is Keane's battle with alcoholism and PTSD. A very moving book - but, I repeat, it is pretty grim.
August 30, 2023
Very good account of both personal progression of PTSD and war reporting experiences. I like that it was interspersed with poems and his humane approach to the memoir made me feel his soreness. Insights into the world of war correspondence, the need to be in the thick of it, the addiction to war.
September 21, 2023
Brilliantly written,, what particularly stood out for me was his description of being an alcoholic and the recovery process, he really got to the heart of that whole experience what he felt and his reactions and thoughts experiencing that traumatic influence on his whole life
October 18, 2023
Unable to resist the adrenalin rush of reporting from frontline war zones, led to a life of alcohol addiction and severe mental health problems for Fergal Keane. A tough but essential read that goes some way to explaining the dangers and cost of this type of career.
July 11, 2024
A frank and harrowing account of the author's struggle with addiction, mental illness and PTSD that leaves the reader wondering how any person, exposed to the horrors that Keane has witnessed in warzones from Rwanda to Sudan to Ukraine, can stay sane.
August 10, 2025
Very personal and graphic, you feel like you know this guy even though he doesn’t actually talk much about his family. The bits about Rwanda and Ukraine were great but the descriptions of rehab were most interesting
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