On Obsession

Think back to the years when you are barely an adult, still hunting for some sense of direction and uneasy about the impulses you might be capable of following. Is everyone a little unhinged? And would your own fixations, like those of a grandfather you remember, eventually soften into something harmless and easy to live with?

Malcolm Knox ranges across a set of preoccupations that include love, Proust, fictional soulmates, palindromic numbers and family lineage. Along the way he asks whether the obsessive pursuit of such things is really a way of withdrawing from life.