"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 Times
A free-wheeling philosophical essay, Hypochondria combines incisive contemporary cultural critique, colourful literary history, and the author's own experience of chronic health anxiety to ask what we might learn from the hypochondriac's discomforting experience of their body. 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 past, Rees reveals himself to be a wry and perceptive critic, exploring the causes – and the costs – of our desire for certainty.
With wit and erudition, Hypochondria demonstrates both the rewards and the perils of reading (too) closely the common but typically overlooked aspects of our everyday lives.
"Glimpses of Rees's life serve as a backbone for his philosophical and historical explorations, and make Hypochondria a propulsive and deeply satisfying read." – Maria Meindl, The Temez Review
Hypochondria"Will Rees considers every aspect of the enigmatic condition in his dazzling 2025 philosophical essay, , a slender yet weighty book that blends cultural and medical history with recollections of a distressing time when he was sure something was horribly wrong with his brain or blood." – Darren D'Addario, Books I Read This Month
"Rees moves through an acrobatic range of disciplines, from historical accounts, literature, philosophy, to what might fashionably be called autotheory, using his own experience to give the variety a steady narrative anchor."– Rosa Appignanesi, Review 31
"Rees explores this evocative subject with a philosopher's assiduous lens. The result is a profound and thought-provoking study that places readers on a tightrope spanning this delicate terrain of health." – Brittany Micka-Foos, Rain Taxi
"Unlike most illness narratives, Hypochondria has no interest in eliciting our sympathy or indicting antagonists. The hypochondriac's desire is a wish to know, to gather knowledge about the unreadable – and as a provisional procedure, it speaks to our anxiety about and taste for the mysterious." – Ron Slate, On the Seawall
[O]ne mind's effort to reconcile its impressions of the world, however distorted, with those of a long lineage of thinkers before him, in the process metastasizing a non-theory of hypochondria into a more universal thesis about the enduring power of human doubt." – Lauren Christensen, The New York Times Book Review
"[S]timulating…Rees raises intriguing questions about links between hypochondria and undiagnosed autoimmune disorders, and ruminates on hypochondria as an extreme form of existential self-reflection." – Publishers Weekly
"In Hypochondria, Will Rees pulls off an almost impossible balancing act. He recalls his personal history with great clarity and vulnerability, and he assembles a dazzling archive of his fellow writers and hypochondriacs: Melville, Kafka, Freud, Sartre, Didion. Hypochondria, Rees shows us, is a specific case of fantasizing about what we cannot know – we are all, in our own ways, hypochondriacs." – Merve Emre, Literary Hub
"Hypochondria is a beautifully written, exacting, exquisite piece of literature and an urgent intervention into a deeply necessary conversation that has languished in the shadows for far too long. This book is as clever as it is brave, and it will change and move everyone who reads it. To capture the intricacies of our relationship with illness, bo
