Illness as a Metaphor

AIDS and Its Metaphors

Sontag

$44.95

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Picador US
25 August 2001

Sociology; Medicine; Popular medicine & health; Coping with illness

Susan Sontag's celebrated essays on cancer and AIDS now available in one volume.

In 1978, Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as ""one of the most liberating books of its time."" A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment; and it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed.

Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.

These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

By: Sontag
Imprint: Picador US
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 204g
ISBN: 9780312420130
ISBN 10: 0312420137
Pages: 183
Publication Date: 25 August 2001
Audience: College/higher education , General/trade , A / AS level , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Susan Sontag is the author of four other novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, and The Volcano Lover; and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; I, etcetera a collection of stories; several plays, and five works of nonfiction, among them On Photography and Against Interpretation. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.

Reviews for Illness as a Metaphor: AIDS and Its Metaphors

""Susan Sontag's Illness as Metaphor was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term 'cancer personality' and speak more soothingly of 'disease-producing lifestyles' . . . AIDS and Its Metaphors extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear."" --Michael Ignatieff, The New Republic