MAYHEM: A MEMOIR

(Penguin £9.99)

IN JULY 2012, the decomposing body of Eva Rausing was discovered at the Belgravia mansion she shared with her husband, Hans.

To an outsider, the couple seemed to possess all the ingredients of a charmed existence: immense wealth (Hans was heir to the vast Tetra Pak fortune), four children, a close extended family and a lifestyle of privilege. But both Hans and Eva were drug addicts.

‘In some ways, it’s an ordinary story: two people met in recovery, fell in love, got married, had children, then relapsed,’ writes Sigrid, Hans’s sister. ‘ He survived; she did not.’

Her eloquent and harrowing memoir explores, with sorrow, guilt and agonised self-questioning, the devastating effects of addiction, on not only addicted individuals, but their family and friends.

‘It was his addiction,’ Sigrid writes, ‘but it was my addiction, too.’