Published in 2021
320 pages
8 hours and 8 minutes
Kate Summerscale, formerly the literary editor of the Daily Telegraph (London), is the author of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, a number one bestseller in the UK, which was translated into more than a dozen languages and won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and the British Book Awards Book of the Year. Her first book, The Queen of Whale Cay, won a Somerset Maugham Award and was short-listed for the Whitbread Biography Award, The Wicked Boy won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime and The Haunting of Alma Fielding was short-listed for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction. Summerscale lives in London.
What is this book about?
Ever been struck dumb when speaking in public? You might be suffering from glossophobia. Do your book-buying habits verge on bibliomania? Do you recoil in arachnophobic horror at the sight of a spider—or twitch with nomophobia when you misplace your mobile phone?
Our fears and compulsions often feel like part of our deepest selves—yet they’re bound up in the currents of the world around us. This thrilling compendium of 99 phobias and manias, rare and familiar, delves into the obsessions that shape us all. Award-winning author Kate Summerscale takes us from the Middle Ages to the present day, using rich and riveting case studies to trace the links between the private and the public, the personal and the political.
