What are some good novels that deal with insanity?

[spookymulder93]

I'm in a crazy mood.

[AllyFizzle]

American Psycho

[AllyFizzle]

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Moby Dick (though Ahab's madness is probably not the kind of insanity you wanted it is a central theme)
The Killer Inside Me
The Yellow Wallpaper

[TheFifthElement]

Hunger by Knut Hamsun

[Lulim]

Tomás Eloy Martinez: The Flight of the Queen

[Aida-S]

Maybe it's not exactly what you wanted, but Tender is the Night is good for schizophrenia description

[Odysseus93]

It's not really a novel but Hamlet's really good...

Dickens also has a lot of good books which have at least elements of insanity in them, Great Expectations and David Copperfield being a couple.

[dfloyd]

Rochester kept his crazy wife imprisoned upstairs in his large house. A typical way in which the insane were dealt with in the nintenth century.

Miss Haversham in Great Expectations wasn't exactly sane.

Nicole was cured of schizophrenia by her husband, Dr. Dick Diver, who was rewarded by her divorcing him, in Tender Is the Night.

[kelby_lake]

Tender is The Night is good
Lolita
Pale Fire

[spookymulder93]

Rochester kept his crazy wife imprisoned upstairs in his large house. A typical way in which the insane were dealt with in the nintenth century.

Miss Haversham in Great Expectations wasn't exactly sane.

Nicole was cured of schizophrenia by her husband, Dr. Dick Diver, who was rewarded by her divorcing him, in Tender Is the Night.

^^^^That sounds interesting.

[kasie]

Hannah Green: I Never Promised You a Rose Garden - about teenage schizophrenia.

Margaret Forster: Have the Men had Enough? - about Senile Dementia (Alzheimers) and how it affects not just the sufferer but the whole family.

Neither book would count as Literature-with-a Capital-L but I hope you will not dismiss either for that reason: they both seem to me to reflect real-life experiences and invoke pity and terror, the hallmark of Tragedy.