Olivia Laing Everybody

'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