The Art of Death

A moving reflection on a subject that touches us all, by the bestselling author ofClaire of the Sea Light

Edwidge Danticat’sThe Art of Death: Writing the Final Storyis at once a personal account of her mother dying from cancer and a deeply considered reckoning with the ways that other writers have approached death in their own work. “Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses,” Danticat notes in her introduction. “I have been writing about death for as long as I have been writing.” The book moves outward from the shock of her mother’s diagnosis and sifts through Danticat’s writing life and personal history, allthe while shifting fluidly from examples that range from Gabriel García Márquez’sOne Hundred Years of Solitudeto Toni Morrison’sSula.The narrative, which continually circles the many incarnations of death from individual to large-scale catastrophes, culminates in a beautiful, heartrending prayer in the voice of Danticat’s mother. A moving tribute and a work of astute criticism,The Art of Deathis a book that will profoundly alter all who encounter it.