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In the spring of 2002, a few months into her first year at Yale, Esmé Weijun Wang was admitted to the Yale Psychiatric Institute; after a second stay the university asked her to leave, and it later turned down her application to return. She finished her degree at Stanford in 2006, took an MFA at the University of Michigan, and in 2013 went through months of psychosis that changed her diagnosis from bipolar disorder to schizoaffective disorder. Born in the Midwest to Taiwanese parents and now living in San Francisco, she has published a gothic family novel and a New York Times bestselling book of essays about living with schizophrenia. This guide covers her two key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 key books · 2016–2019 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Esmé Weijun Wang has published two books: the novel The Border of Paradise (2016) and the essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), which won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize as a manuscript and became a New York Times bestseller. Start with The Collected Schizophrenias; below you will also find her short story in Granta and her foreword to a Penguin Classics reissue.
Where to Start with Esmé Weijun Wang
If you want her most famous book
→ The Collected Schizophrenias (2019) — thirteen essays on diagnosis, psychosis and work.
If you want her fiction
→ The Border of Paradise (2016) — a gothic family saga across Brooklyn, Taiwan and rural California.
If you want a single essay first
→ The Collected Schizophrenias (2019) — read the opening piece, “Diagnosis”.
2 Esmé Weijun Wang Books, in Order
The Border of Paradise
David Nowak, the anxious heir to a Brooklyn piano company, marries Jia-hui, a woman he meets in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and renames her Daisy. With their son William and Gillian, his daughter by his first love Marianne, they withdraw to an isolated house in rural California, and after David’s suicide Jia-hui plans for the two children to marry. The story rotates among six narrators. Published by Unnamed Press, it was one of NPR’s best books of 2016, and Carmen Maria Machado reviewed it for NPR as a gothic novel of high literary quality.
The Collected Schizophrenias
Thirteen essays on living with schizoaffective disorder and late-stage Lyme disease, from “Diagnosis” and “High-Functioning” to “Yale Will Not Save You”, “On the Ward” and an essay on the Slender Man case. “Perdition Days” describes the period when she believed she was dead, a delusion known as Cotard’s. Published by Graywolf, the book became a New York Times bestseller and won the 2020 Northern California Book Award for creative nonfiction.
In What Order to Read Esmé Weijun Wang
The two books do not connect, so either can come first. Publication order shows a turn: she planned to write fiction, and the essays began only after “Perdition Days”, written during a psychotic episode, found a large audience online.
Most readers start with The Collected Schizophrenias. If you then read The Border of Paradise, you will recognise its concern with mental illness inside a family, written years before she wrote about her own.
A reading path
1. “Diagnosis”, the first essay in The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)
2. The rest of The Collected Schizophrenias
3. The Border of Paradise (2016)
4. “What Terrible Thing It Was”, in Granta 139 (2017)
Shorter Work by Esmé Weijun Wang
Beyond the 2 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Short fiction and introductions
2
2 books · 2017–2022
- 2017What Terrible Thing It Wasshort story in Granta 139, Best of Young American Novelists; reprinted in The Best American Short Stories 2018
- 2022I Never Promised You a Rose Gardenher foreword to the Penguin Classics edition of Joanne Greenberg’s 1964 novel
The years · 2001–2022
Quick facts about Esmé Weijun Wang
- Known for
- Writing about schizoaffective disorder from the inside, most of all in The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), which became a New York Times bestseller.
- 2001
- Enters Yale, aged 17
- 2006
- Graduates from Stanford
- 2013
- Months of psychosis; diagnosis becomes schizoaffective disorder
- 2022
- Foreword to Penguin Classics’ I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
- Born
- In the Midwest, to Taiwanese parents
- Education
- Yale (left 2003), BA Stanford (2006), MFA University of Michigan
- Lives
- San Francisco
- Diagnoses
- Schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type) and late-stage Lyme disease
- Honours
- Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize (2016), Granta Best of Young American Novelists (2017), Whiting Award for nonfiction (2018)
- Bestseller
- The Collected Schizophrenias, a New York Times bestseller
The red mark is 2019: The Collected Schizophrenias, her essays on living with schizoaffective disorder.
How Esmé Weijun Wang Writes: Illness from the Inside
Her essays combine first-person scenes with clinical history. “Diagnosis” moves between her own psychiatric assessments and the changing definitions in the DSM, because, as she told The Paris Review in 2019, changes in “the bible of psychiatry continue to affect people’s lives.” She has named Andrew Solomon’s The Noonday Demon as a model, and she is careful to say she is writing as a patient: “I also really want people to know that I’m not an expert.”
Illness shapes how the books are made, not only what they are about. Because of late-stage Lyme disease she has drafted essays by tapping with one finger on a phone or tablet: “It gets done; slowly, but it gets done.” “Perdition Days” was written while she believed she was dead, and it reports that state from inside rather than looking back on it.
Her fiction works through structure and voice. The Border of Paradise passes between six narrators across two generations, and she leaves some Chinese in the novel untranslated, a choice she explained in an essay for Literary Hub. A chapter of the novel began as her MFA thesis at Michigan.
Frequently asked questions about Esmé Weijun Wang’s books
How many books has Esmé Weijun Wang written?
Two: the novel The Border of Paradise (2016) and the essay collection The Collected Schizophrenias (2019). She has also published short fiction, including “What Terrible Thing It Was” in Granta (2017), and a foreword to the 2022 Penguin Classics edition of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.
What are Esmé Weijun Wang’s books in order?
The Border of Paradise (2016), then The Collected Schizophrenias (2019).
Where should I start with Esmé Weijun Wang?
The Collected Schizophrenias. If you want to try one piece first, read its opening essay, “Diagnosis”.
What is Esmé Weijun Wang’s most famous book?
The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), thirteen essays on living with schizoaffective disorder. The manuscript won the 2016 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the book became a New York Times bestseller.
What is The Collected Schizophrenias about?
Wang’s life with schizoaffective disorder and late-stage Lyme disease: her diagnoses, being made to leave Yale after two psychiatric hospitalisations, involuntary commitment, appearing “high-functioning”, and a period of Cotard’s delusion in which she believed she was dead.
What is The Border of Paradise about?
A gothic family saga. David Nowak, heir to a Brooklyn piano company, marries Jia-hui from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and moves the family to an isolated house in rural California, where their children grow up cut off from the world. It is told by six narrators.
What illness does Esmé Weijun Wang have?
Schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type, and late-stage Lyme disease. She was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder the summer before she started at Yale; the diagnosis changed after a long psychotic episode in 2013.
What awards has Esmé Weijun Wang won?
The Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize (2016), a Whiting Award for nonfiction (2018) and the Northern California Book Award for creative nonfiction (2020). Granta named her one of its Best of Young American Novelists in 2017.
Is Esmé Weijun Wang writing a new book?
In 2019 she signed a two-book deal with Riverhead for a novel and a second essay collection, and she worked on a draft of her second novel during a MacDowell residency that year. Neither book has been published yet.
Footnotes
- Esmé Weijun Wang — Wikipedia
- The Collected Schizophrenias — Wikipedia
- “Schizophrenia Terrifies”: An Interview with Esmé Weijun Wang — The Paris Review, 2019
- Gothic family drama at The Border of Paradise — NPR, 2016
- Yale Will Not Save You — The Sewanee Review
- The Border of Paradise — Unnamed Press
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Schizophrenia terrifies.”
— Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019), the first line of the opening essay, “Diagnosis”
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