Description

JUNE 2026.

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, AI, toxic social media…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.

Credit John Kenney

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 Montréal; it has been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese and Latvian. A long-time Montrealer, Abley now lives in Gananoque, Ontario.

REVIEWS AND PRAISE

“[Abley’s] sage advice makes for a cathartic read.” — Literary Review of Canada

“Numbness now seems to be the emotional default for so many of us — the result of living in a deranged reverse panopticon, where everything bad happening everywhere in the world (plus the fever dreams of robots) is beamed directly into your eyeballs all day long by our pitiless overlords.” — Mark Abley discusses Numb on the podcast Fucking Cancelled.

“This is the greatest contribution of Numb. We can control ourselves. We can respond to and resist the maelstrom of violence and bigotry that drives so many of us to despair.”  — Jack McClelland, Montreal Review of Books

“Whether readers can and will activate themselves is a question addressed in Mark Abley’s Numb: The Politics of Overwhelm, a personal reflection on the effects of doom-scrolling through the daily barrage of polycrisis – genocides, climate breakdown, economic uncertainty – that leaves many of us flailing between genuine concern and feelings of despairing disempowerment.” — Matthew Behrens, Quill & Quire

“While the book ends with this call to rise to the challenge of resistance, Numb is a quick read documentary that makes the case for taking action and lets you know that you are not alone in your feelings — or lack thereof. Resistance is not futile.” — The Seaboard Review

REVIEWS AND PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS TITLES

“Spoken Here is a splendid, original work, written with a combination of the scholarly and the personal, the anecdotal and the researched, in voices that celebrate words and create pictures…. Abley’s point, persuasively and vibrantly made, is that we are all weakened by threads dropped from the tapestry of international languages and cultures.” — The Globe and Mail

“Gracefully written, funny and frequently heartbreaking.”— New York Times Book Review

“Gorgeous and lyrical … Strange Bewildering Time is … a meditation on the nature of memory, time and self-knowledge, as well as an account of a region on the brink of turmoil … There is poetry on every page.” Montreal Review of Books