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Top 5 books about obsession, selected by author and academic Marieke Bigg

Novels exploring the compulsive and often painful side of human nature

Image: Annabel P from Pixabay

Individuals in the grip of obsession have provided a jumping off point for countless novels. Here are some of the best, chosen by Marieke Bigg, the author of This Won’t Hurt: How Medicine Fails Women.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

A dog-headed doctor determined to play God by creating a sentient creature is killed, in the end, by his own ambition. 

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Less grandiose, but equally painful, with the tension coming from a painter tormented by the impossibility of capturing what she sees. 

I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

Another highly entertaining example, written in the voice of a failed artist who finds a new obsession when she begins to write love letters to a man she barely knows. 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

I have to mention a luscious book about a woman possessed by a dream imploring her to stop eating meat, alongside her brother-in-law’s call to capture her body in a piece of video art; the unknown impulses driving their aestheticised choices add colour to their drab lives, and also destroy them. 

Yellowface by Rebecca F Kuang

A recent picture of what happens when art dictates life. Determined to make her name as an author, June Hayward toes a dubious ethical line that ends in violence. The most ambitious and intractable work for these obsessive individuals it seems is the art of living itself! 

Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty
Advertising helps fund Big Issue’s mission to end poverty

A Scarab Where the Heart Should Be by Marieke Bigg is out on 12 September (Dead Ink Books, £10.99). These titles are available to buy from The Big Issue shop on Bookshop.org, which helps to support The Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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