Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors - Paperback

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Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
  • Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors - Paperback

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors - Paperback

by Susan Sontag
$18.00
$18.00

Book Overview

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.
ISBN9781250374738
Author Susan Sontag
PublisherPicador USA
GenreBiography, Education, and Health & fitness
FormatPaperback
PublishedJuly 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages192
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Biography & Autobiography Health & Fitness Nonfiction Social Science

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More by Susan Sontag

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors - Paperback

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors - Paperback

By Susan Sontag

About Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag was the author of four novels, including The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; a collection of stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed; and nine works of essays, among them On Photography, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. In 2001, Sontag was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work. She died in New York City in 2004.

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