" It was evident that the melancholic voice of madness rolling around his head had entirely devoured him in his solitude. His egotism, false notion of self-worth and destinyon his Earth, and the vanity that, in effect, was the prelude to so much of his embryonic madness coupled with the desappointment of Madrid, had taken on the satanic proportions of hubris that, all too often, characterise the principle deliriums of these kinds of insanities. his pride had removed itself from the mortal domain."
Set in around Barcelona at the time of the Carlist Wars and, later, the 'Gold Fever' that gripped the country and its new bourgeoisie, The Madness was first published in 1899 and tells de story of a young revolutionary called Daniel Serrallonga and his gradual deterioration into mental illness and delusion.
the Madness is a fascinating study of mental health within both rural and urban Catalan society and against the backdrop of the political crisis that ripped Spainapart in the mid to late nineteenth century and laid the foundations of the Spanish Civil War.
