Everybody: A Book About Freedom

‘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 her 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