Quillette has published a review of Gad Saad’s new book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, and the verdict is blunt: the 256-page volume tackles an interesting topic, but Saad’s narcissistic ramblings make it almost impossible to read.
The book, scheduled for publication by Broadside Books in May 2026, centers on what Saad calls “suicidal empathy,” his term for empathy that becomes harmful when it is not regulated by rationality. The review says the Canadian commentator and Concordia University marketing professor argues that the extent to which people empathise with others has to be framed by a rational understanding of those people and their circumstances.
That is the theory. The review says the execution is something else. It describes Suicidal Empathy as a book that repeatedly circles back to Saad’s own books, podcasts, talks, Twitter feuds and contemporary politics, with the author rambling smugly from one subject to the next and often confusing sarcasm with wit.
The critique lands harder because this is not Saad’s first attempt to build a larger case against what he sees as modern intellectual drift. The review also revisits The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, saying that earlier book was soaked in narcissism too. In that context, Suicidal Empathy reads less like a fresh argument than another turn in a familiar performance.
Quillette’s review, titled Playing Gad, makes the point plainly: the topic is worth the discussion, but the book itself fights against the reader at nearly every turn. Saad’s warning about empathy becomes the center of the debate, yet the review says his own voice overwhelms the case he is trying to make. For readers deciding whether to pick it up ahead of the May 2026 release, that is the question answered here.
