Man Who Ate the World

France, 1790s. In the chaos of the Revolution, a man wanders the streets with a hunger that defies science. Tarrare could eat a basket of apples in a single sitting, swallow corks, stones, and live animals. He was a medical anomaly, a spy for the French army (smuggling documents in his stomach), and a tragic figure cursed with a bottomless void inside him. This book investigates the grotesque an...