Come And Go Mad and Other Stories — Fredric Brown

An undercover reporter. An elaborate ruse to get committed in an asylum to discover the story of lifetime. It should be a simple enough assignment; pretend to be crazy, get inside, observe, have someone to certify you are cured, and then get out. The story will be published and awards may be given to the intrepid reporter who braved the high walls of a nuthouse in search of the truth.
However, for reporter George Vine, the assignment is far from being exciting. It is scary and anxiety-provoking, for deep inside him, George thinks that he is not really George, but Napoleon Bonaparte in George's body. Is he mad for thinking he is Napoleon? Is he a crazy man pretending to be sane pretending to be mad just to enter the sanitarium? Your concept of reality and fiction will certainly be challenged in the devious twists and turns of this story by award-winning mystery and science fiction writer Fredric Brown.
More than this novella, however, this collection also gathers some of Brown's great short stories. There's a story of the last Martian village, a Russian space traveling mouse called Mitkey, the world as perceived by the winning pieces in a chess game, and a picture sent by aliens to a painter for a writer to write a story about. In all these, Brown displayed his wit and humor, his innovative way of writing, and his penchant for playing with words. “A stand-up comic,” a reviewer once called Brown, and it is never truer than in this collection of his work.
This collections contains the stories: Come and Go Mad, Star Mouse, Recessional, Earthman Bearing Gifts, The Frownzly Florgels, and The End