On Obsession

MUP’s new series Little Books on Big Themes pairs leading Australian thinkers and cultural figures with some of the big themes in life: rage, experience, longing and ecstasy. Each author’s 10,000-word take on a chosen theme is presented as an eminently collectable hardback.

Malcolm Knox contemplates love, Proust, soulmates in fiction, palindromic numbers and bloodlines, among other fixations, and wonders if the obsessive quest marks a retreat from life …