Outcast

A$30 · Offered by Harry Hartog Rare Books

**A TELEGRAPHBOOK OF THE YEAR** 'Shocking, moving and sensitive.' TLS 'Uplifting.' THE TIMES 'Fascinating.' SPECTATOR 'Remarkable.' LITERARY REVIEW 'Gripping.' NATUREThe story of leprosy is the story of humanity. It is a story of isolation and exclusion, of resilience and resistance, one which has permeated global cultures in myriad ways for thousands of years, dividing the world into the 'clean' and the 'unclean'. Oliver Basciano's journey to demystify leprosy takes him from the Romanian border, the hinterlands of Brazil and the fringes of Siberia to the Japanese archipelago, Robben Island and the northern provinces of Mozambique. It reveals the image of mediaeval leprosy to be a nineteenth-century myth in-vented to justify gross mistreatment of patients, a blueprint used for further state-sanctioned stigma: colonialism, racism, religious and economic exploitation. Basciano meets those living with leprosy today, those exiled to various leprosaria around the world and forced to find homes away from home; he hears stories of community and perseverance in the face of grave circumstances, of lives bound to each other through shared experience and how they have re-fused to be cast aside. A work of outstanding empathy, Outcast shines new light on the human condition asking: does a society's sense of itself always rely on ostracisation?'Remarkable . . . grippingly and humanely recounted.' - PHILIPPE SANDS'It is impossible not to be moved by the lives unfolding in these pages, impos

• Binding: Hardcover

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