Outcast - by Oliver Basciano (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

The story of how one misunderstood disease became the global blueprint for stigma and ostracization

Outcast: A History of Leprosy, Humanity and the Modern World reveals leprosy as the world's foundational stigma, underlying the colonialism, exclusion, and exploitation that has shaped contemporary life.

After hearing leprosy being used as an anti-immigration dog whistle, Oliver Basciano began a journey into the past, uncovering how this ancient disease has been weaponized, used to justify forced exile and social ostracism around the world. Traveling from the last leprosarium in Europe to remote villages in Mozambique, from Siberian settlements to Brazil's hinterlands, Basciano builds a history that centers the voices of patients and those forced into the colony system. Along the way, he finds communities formed in exile, patient activism, and the persistent human capacity for joy.

In this pulsating, compassionate book, the trope of medieval suffering is transformed into a bitingly relevant study of hope and solidarity.

Review Quotes

"This singular study sheds fascinating light on an ideological cornerstone of modern society."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A philosophically charged journey through the little-known world of leprosy . . . [and] a multifaceted portrait of a disease whose victims, like so many others, are unjustly blamed for their suffering."--Kirkus Reviews

"Outcast is remarkable. It is a powerful, revelatory and truly shocking account spanning across time and place, then and still now, grippingly and humanely recounted."--Philippe Sands, author of The Last Colony

"It is impossible not to be moved by the lives unfolding in these pages, impossible not to be left transformed and enlightened. This is an ambitious, fascinating and rich journey. A cool, expansive assessment of us as humans--cruel, frightened, hasty and merciless but also resilient, creative and capable of forging remarkable community bonds."--Leila Aboulela, author of River Spirit

"Marvellous. . . . A gravely enlightening and moving pathology of a disease that remains a byword for marginalisation, a 'receptacle for nightmares and prejudice, ' in Basciano's words. Written with a meticulous attentiveness that never loses sight of the individual, Outcast maps epidemiology onto colonial history, allowing the voices of those who have lived with leprosy, across the oceans and the centuries, to emerge in irrepressible chorus."--William Atkins, author of Exiles

"Nothing is more central to our global system, and its myriad crises, than the question of exclusion--who is granted full humanity, and who is rendered invisible--and the history of leprosy is the tale of our varied approaches to the outsider. In Oliver Basciano's capable and careful hands, the leprosarium becomes a key to understanding the world that emerged in the wake of classical and feudal civilizations; the story of a disease becomes a page-turner about the nature of life itself."--Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method

"A new kind of travel book--across continents and, more importantly, across the partitions that separate the healthy from the damned--Outcast is a revisionist history that makes you realise . . . how differently you look at the world than you did when you first cracked its spine."--Benjamin Moser, author of Sontag: Her Life and Work

About the Author