Hypochondria

"Everyone must read this book." – Lucia Osborne-Crowley

"Extraordinary and utterly compelling." – Adam Phillips 

"An almost impossible balancing act." – Merve Emre

“Part philosophical treatise, part memoir, part history, Rees’s genre-bending meditation on hypochondria references everyone from Freud to Kafka to Seinfeld in a provocative search to find out why, exactly, we believe we’re sick.” – The New York Times

A free-wheeling philosophical essay, Hypochondria combines incisive contemporary cultural critique, colourful literary history, and the author’s own experience of chronic health anxiety to ask what we might learn from the hypochondriac’s discomforting experience of their body. Hypochondria is expansive in its range of references, from the writings of Franz Kafka to original yet accessible readings of theorists like Lauren Berlant. Whether he is discussing Seinfeld, John Donne, or his own past, Rees reveals himself to be a wry and perceptive critic, exploring the causes – and the costs – of our desire for certainty.

With wit and erudition, Hypochondria demonstrates both the rewards and the perils of reading (too) closely the common but typically overlooked aspects of our everyday lives.