Book dossier

Illness as metaphor

by Susan Sontag

In 1978, while recovering from cancer, Susan Sontag wrote Illness as metaphor, the celebrated essay on the invented and often punitive uses of illness in our culture. It was not surprising that a decade later, after the advent of AIDS, Sontag felt compelled to write a sequel that would counter the almost universal labeling of AIDS as a "plague". Published together in one volume these works are brimming with humane and original ideas about disease and the modern condition.