Hypochondria - by Will Rees (Paperback)

About the Book

"A free-wheeling philosophical essay, 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 hypochondriac past, Rees reveals himself to be a wry and perceptive critic, exploration 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."--

Book Synopsis

"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.

Review Quotes

"Rees explores this evocative subject with a philosopher's assiduous lens. The result is a profound and thought-provoking study that places readers on a tightrope spanning this delicate terrain of health." - Brittany Micka-Foos, Rain Taxi

"Unlike most illness narratives, Hypochondria has no interest in eliciting our sympathy or indicting antagonists. The hypochondriac's desire is a wish to know, to gather knowledge about the unreadable - and as a provisional procedure, it speaks to our anxiety about and taste for the mysterious." - Ron Slate, On the Seawall

"[O]ne mind's effort to reconcile its impressions of the world, however distorted, with those of a long lineage of thinkers before him, in the process metastasizing a non-theory of hypochondria into a more universal thesis about the enduring power of human doubt."- Lauren Christensen, The New York Times Book Review

"[S]timulating...Rees raises intriguing questions about links between hypochondria and undiagnosed autoimmune disorders, and ruminates on hypochondria as an extreme form of existential self-reflection." - Publishers Weekly

"In Hypochondria, Will Rees pulls off an almost impossible balancing act. He recalls his personal history with great clarity and vulnerability, and he assembles a dazzling archive of his fellow writers and hypochondriacs: Melville, Kafka, Freud, Sartre, Didion. Hypochondria, Rees shows us, is a specific case of fantasizing about what we cannot know - we are all, in our own ways, hypochondriacs." - Merve Emre, Literary Hub

"Hypochondria is a beautifully written, exacting, exquisite piece of literature and an urgent intervention into a deeply necessary conversation that has languished in the shadows for far too long. This book is as clever as it is brave, and it will change and move everyone who reads it. To capture the intricacies of our relationship with illness, both individually and in our collective consciousness, is one of the most difficult things a writer can do - Rees has done it perfectly. Everyone must read this book." - Lucia Osborne-Crowley, author of The Lasting Harm

"Extraordinary and utterly compelling. Part personal memoir, and part riveting history of the fateful and absorbing uncertainty that is hypochondria, this book will be an illumination for anyone who has ever wondered if they are ill." - Adam Phillips, author of On Giving Up

"I marvelled at this elegant and intellectually capacious book. Unmoored by its elusive subject, Rees innovates an utterly engrossing mode of inquiry that seems forged from the very material of hypochondria itself - radical doubt ... What emerges from Rees's ability to dwell in uncertainty is proof of doubt's generative potential; its questions are insistent and hard-won vital signs. What if we are what we read? What if health is little more than blissful ignorance? What if we can never be sure of just how sick we really are?" - Daisy Lafarge, author of Paul

"This elegant and finely crafted essay will be enlightening not only for those who suffer from health anxieties but, more generally, for anyone confronting the problem of inhabiting the human body. Blending autobiography, history, and theory, it raises crucial questions about our embodied existence in an engaging and accessible way." - Darian Leader, author of The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression

About the Author

Will Rees is a writer and editor living in London. He is a director of Peninsula Press, which he co-founded in 2018. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, Granta, Aeon, 3: AM, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.