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Everybody

Synopsis

'Intensely moving, vital and artful' - Guardian
'A dizzying ride . . . both timely and beguiling' - Sunday Times


From the award-winning author of Crudo, this is an exhilarating and eminently readable study of the long struggle for bodily freedom – from gay rights and sexual liberation to feminism and the civil rights movement.

Drawing on their own experiences in protest and travelling from Weimar Berlin to the prisons of McCarthy-era America, Laing grapples with some of the most significant and complicated figures of the past century, among them Nina Simone, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag and Malcolm X.

At a time when basic rights are once again in danger, Everybody is a crucial examination of the forces arranged against freedom – and a celebration of how ordinary human bodies can resist oppression and reshape the world.

Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize.

'An ambitious, absorbing achievement that will make your brain hum' – Evening Standard

'Sets her alongside the likes of Arundhati Roy, John Berger and James Baldwin' – Financial Times

Details

26 May 2022
368 pages
9781509857128
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

Astonishing . . . I love this bookEsmé Weijun Wang, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
Bristles with energy and understanding as it charts the body’s pleasures and pains, its fragilities, and endurance in the long 20th century . . . This really is a book for everybodyLisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad
Olivia Laing writes so well and engaginglyPhilippa Perry, author of How to Stay Sane
Olivia Laing’s mind is a thrill to watchAlex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body