Nicotine

Written with the passion of an obsessive, Nicotine addresses a life of addiction, from the epiphany of the first drag to the perennial last last cigarette. Reflecting on his experiences as a smoker from a young age, Gregor Hens investigates the irreversible effects of nicotine on thought and patterns of behaviours. He extends the conversation with other smokers to meditations on Mark Twain and Italo Svevo, the nature of habit, the validity of hypnosis, and the most insignificant city in the United States, where he lived for far too long. With comic insight and meticulous precision, Hens deconstructs every facet of the dependency and offers a brilliant disquisition on the psychopathology of addiction.

‘If Nicotine has a literary progenitor I would say that it is In Search of Lost Time […] an extraordinary act of literary finesse […] [with] tinkling little notes of comedy […] [a] dark, lovely, funny book.’
— Joan Acocella, The New Yorker

‘[W]hen Nicotine stays dry, earthy and combustible, like a Virginia tobacco blend, it has a lot to say and says it well.’
— Dwight Garner, New York Times

‘A satisfying wisp of an essay about tobacco, addiction, first cigarettes, last cigarettes, breathing, kissing, hypnosis, literature, memory, and marking time […] Nicotine is a smoke ring, blown perfectly in a single puff, or – better? – a wafting trail of vapor. Will Self contributes a foreword, a rapid monologue punctuated with vigorous little twists, as though he were grinding out a stub with yellow-stained fingers.’
— Christine Smallwood, Harper’s

Gregor Hens, born in 1965, is a German writer and translator. He has notably translated Will Self, Jonathan Lethem andGeorge Packer into German.

Nicotine is part-memoir, part-cultural history, written just after its author Gregor Hens has overcome the withdrawal symptoms from quitting smoking. Nicotine is part-memoir, part-cultural history, written just after its author Gregor Hens has overcome the withdrawal symptoms from quitting smoking.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.