"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 T...

A personal and literary examination of hypochondria.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, exploring the causes — and the costs — of our desire for certainty. Wit...