Description

‘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 her 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

Publisher Review

Simply one of our most exciting writers * Observer * One of the finest writers of the new non-fiction * Harper's Bazaar * Like all great critics, Olivia Laing combines formidable intelligence with boundless curiosity and fabulous taste, but she also has a rare quality of intimacy; an ability to connect the reader to a work of art or literature (or for that matter a facet of life itself) with a directness that lights it up like nothing else. It's why I read her. -- James Lasdun, author of Afternoon of a Faun In the current climate, a writer of Olivia Laing's intelligence is more necessary than ever. Her observations and poetic incisiveness on art, writers and politics are a gift. -- Sinead Gleeson, author of Constellations I yield to absolutely no one in my admiration of Olivia Laing; her essays are magical liberations of words and ideas, art and love -- Philip Hoare, author of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR Olivia Laing is my new favourite non-fiction writer. -- Nick Hornby A brave writer whose books open up fundamental questions about life and art * Telegraph *