In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife
‘Mind blowingly brilliant’ PHILIPPA PERRY
‘Few other writers have such passion for granular detail, intellectual heft and boundless curiosity’ THE TIMES
‘As suspenseful and pacy as an episode of peak-era ER‘ GUARDIAN
A near-fatal health emergency leads to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow—by the bestselling author of Tribe and The Perfect Storm.
For years as an award-winning war reporter, Sebastian Junger travelled to many front lines and frequently put his life at risk. And yet the closest he ever came to death was the summer of 2020 while spending a quiet afternoon at the New England home he shared with his wife and two young children. Crippled by abdominal pain, Junger was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Once there, he began slipping away. As blackness encroached, he was visited by his dead father, inviting Junger to join him. “It’s okay,” his father said. “There’s nothing to be scared of. I’ll take care of you.” That was the last thing Junger remembered until he came to the next day when he was told he had suffered a ruptured aneurysm that he should not have survived.
This experience spurred Junger—a confirmed atheist raised by his physicist father to respect the empirical—to undertake a scientific, philosophical, and deeply personal examination of mortality and what happens after we die. How do we begin to process the brutal fact that any of us might perish unexpectedly on what begins as an ordinary day? How do we grapple with phenomena that science may be unable to explain? And what happens to a person, emotionally and spiritually, when we are forced to reckon with such existential questions?
In My Time of Dying is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.
‘Moving, compact, philosophically ambitious … A humbling volume’ OBSERVER
‘Stunning … A powerful book that comes as close as anything I’ve read in explaining what it means to be human’ JAMES PATTERSON
‘An instant classic that filled me with wonder, gratitude and awe’ WILL SCHWALBE
‘A stunning account I didn’t so much read as inhale, awed and riveted and forever changed’ MICHAEL FINKEL
'Mind blowingly brilliant … Makes you think. Makes you wonder. Still getting my head round it. I found it clever AND moving' Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Want Everyone You Love to Read -
'Few other writers have such passion for granular detail, intellectual heft and boundless curiosity' The Times -
'A terrifically detailed medical thriller, as suspenseful and pacy as an episode of peak-era ER' Guardian -
'A moving, compact, philosophically ambitious, theological and scientific meditation of raw honesty and a necessary endeavour … Humbling' Observer -
”'Stunning … One of the finest writers of our generation” - James Patterson, New York Times #1 bestselling author
'The selected highlights of a memoir interspersed with the hospital drama, all described in tight, vivid prose' The Times -
'Haunting' New Statesman -
'A riveting and resonant meditation on some of life’s biggest questions' Publishers Weekly -
'A virtuoso of narrative nonfiction, [Junger] has conjured his most personal and yet universal book, a stunning account I didn’t so much read as inhale, awed and riveted and forever changed' Michael Finkel, New York Times bestselling author of The Art Thief -
”'[Sebastian Junger] turns inward to examine his own mortality, the most frightening—yet fascinating—frontier there is” - Caitlin Doughty, author of Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory
'With this soon-to-be classic, Junger has crafted an ode to the magical healing power of love and the wonder of life' David R. Dow, author of Things I’ve Learned from Dying: A Book About Life -
'A heart-pounding medical thriller with brilliantly clear science-writing … a tour-de-force about the biggest mystery we all face … An instant classic that filled me with wonder, gratitude, and awe' Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club -