Bibliophobia (Paperback)

Sarah Chihaya

ISBN 10: 0593594746 / ISBN 13: 9780593594742

Published by Random House USA Inc, New York, 2026

About this Item

Paperback. PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.Hua Hsu, author of Stay TrueStirring and sparkling.The Washington PostBooks can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect Life Ruiners.Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrisons The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarahs deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ELECTRIC LIT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780593594742

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Bibliophobia (Paperback)
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc, New York
• Publication Date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593594746
• ISBN 13: 9780593594742
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • “A wise, tremendously moving exploration of what it means to seek companionship and understanding, in books and in life.”—Hua Hsu, author of Stay True

“Stirring and sparkling.”—The Washington Post

Books can seduce you. They can, Sarah Chihaya believes, annihilate, reveal, and provoke you. And anyone incurably obsessed with books understands this kind of unsettling literary encounter. Sarah calls books that have this effect “Life Ruiners”.

Her Life Ruiner, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, became a talisman for her in high school when its electrifying treatment of race exposed Sarah’s deepest feelings about being Japanese American in a predominantly white suburb of Cleveland. But Sarah had always lived through her books, seeking escape, self-definition, and rules for living. She built her life around reading, wrote criticism, and taught literature at an Ivy League University. Then she was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown, and the world became an unreadable blank page. In the aftermath, she was faced with a question. Could we ever truly rewrite the stories that govern our lives?

Bibliophobia is an alternately searing and darkly humorous story of breakdown and survival told through books. Delving into texts such as Anne of Green Gables, Possession, A Tale for the Time Being, The Last Samurai, Chihaya interrogates her cultural identity, her relationship with depression, and the intoxicating, sometimes painful, ways books push back on those who love them.

A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ELECTRIC LIT BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

About the Author

Sarah Chihaya is a book critic, essayist, and editor. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, New York magazine, The Atlantic, and The Yale Review, among other places, and she is the co-author of The Ferrante Letters: An Experiment in Collective Criticism. She has taught at Princeton University, New York University, and UC Berkeley. She is currently a contributing editor at Los Angeles Review of Books and lives in Brooklyn.