On Agoraphobia

Agoraphobia is a condition that limits a person's life, and Graham Caveney's quest to understand it brought him back to his first love: books. This book is a fascinating, entertaining, and sometimes painfully acute look at what it means to live with an anxiety disorder that evades easy definition.

Format: Hardback
Length: 208 pages
Publication date: 28 April 2022
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

If we're talking about agoraphobia, we're talking books. I slip between their covers, lose myself in the turn of one page, and re-discover myself on the next. Reading is a game of hide-and-seek. Narrative and neurosis, uneasy bedfellows sleeping top to toe.

When Graham Caveney was in his early twenties, he began to suffer from what was eventually diagnosed as agoraphobia. What followed were decades of managing his condition and learning to live within the narrow limits it imposed on his life: no motorways, no dual carriageways, no shopping centers, limited time outdoors.

Graham's quest to understand his illness brought him back to his first love: books. From Harper Lee's "Boo Radley," Ford Madox Ford, Emily Dickinson, and Shirley Jackson: the literary world is replete with examples of agoraphobics – once you go looking for them.

"On Agoraphobia" is a fascinating, entertaining, and sometimes painfully acute look at what it means to go through life with an anxiety disorder that evades easy definition.

Weight: 334g
Dimension: 144 x 223 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781529057713