LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2026
WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR NON-FICTION 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2026
'Please read this book. It may very well change how you live' Rachel Clarke
'Profound...compelling...beautiful' Nina Stibbe
'Filled with love...I was spellbound' Kathryn Mannix
'Brilliant...so special' Guardian
An inspiring true story about life, love and letting go
Sarah Perry's father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. He was in some ways a very ordinary man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels and his local church. Yet as Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David through his final days, they realised how extraordinary he really was.
This loving, clear-eyed and unforgettable book shows how death may be met and understood as a part of life - a universal experience that is terrible and beautiful, intimate and real, sometimes all at once.
A Book of the Year for The Times, Guardian, Financial Times and Observer
'Beautiful and profound and completely gripping' Mark Haddon
'A must-read' The Times
'We cannot be but somewhat changed by this remarkable book' Telegraph
'This book will be a lifeline for so many people' Seán Hewitt
'Perry is in a league of her own' Sara Collins
Autorentext
Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Death of an Ordinary Man and Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award. Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024 and her other work has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.