Numb

We are exhausted. We are overwhelmed. Worse, we are numb. No matter what screen you’ re getting your news and information from, the barrage is constant, horrific and always urgent: Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo, climate change, ecological devastation, economic collapse...and of course Donald Trump and all he represents. Authoritarian leaders and genocidal regimes have always found numbness a desirable goal, as it narrows the possibilities for revolt. Shocked and awed into submission, we are at the mercy of tyrants, like captive animals in a zoo. What we see in zoo animals today may be a ghostly image of ourselves. In this lucid, trenchant book, Mark Abley explores the idea of numbness in today's political context.

Mark Abley is a nonfiction writer, journalist, editor and poet. His most recent books are Strange Bewildering Time: Istanbul to Kathmandu in the Last Year of the Hippie Trail and an updated edition of the ground-breaking Conversations with a Dead Man: Indigenous Rights and the Legacy of Duncan Campbell Scott. One of his earlier books, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize and the Grand Prix du Livre de Montré al; it has been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese and Latvian. A long-time Montrealer, Abley now lives in Ontario