‘When we are young adults, not only are we looking for signposts but we are afraid of ourselves, frightened of where our tendencies may lead. Are we all just a tiny bit mad, and were my obsessions, like my grandfather’s, always going to take on a mild and manageable aspect?’

In On Obsession Malcolm Knox contemplates love, Proust, soulmates in fiction, palindromic numbers and bloodlines, among other fixations, and wonders if the obsessive quest marks a retreat from life.