‘I had a really crippling break’: how author Michael Thomas lost 20 years to mania, depression and more

In 2006 the novel Man Gone Down made Thomas famous and won him a €100,000 prize. He expected to produce a follow-up within a year – but life had other plans It should be some kind of happy ending when, after years of poverty and graft, an aspiring writer publishes their debut novel and it is greeted with acclaim and awards – but that’s not how it happened for Michael Thomas. His 2006 novel Man Gone Down seemed to augur the arrival of a powerful new literary voice, the beginning of a brilliant...

By Steve Rose