Overview

"A MAJOR INTERNATIONAL BEST-SELLER A timely, powerful reflection on our relationship to death and an invitation to accept loss and vulnerability as essential and enriching parts of life, from France's most prominent female rabbi and a leading intellectual. The New York Times describes Delphine Horvilleur as ""the rare intellectual to bring religious texts into the public square,"" and, as one of only five female rabbis in France, unique in that she ""calls for a plurality of religious voices in interpreting holy texts."" Living with Our Dead is a profoundly humanist, universal, and hopeful book that celebrates life, love, memory, and the power of storytelling to inspire and sustain us. In this moving book by the leader of France's Liberal Jewish Movement, Delphine Horvilleur recounts eleven stories of loss, mourning, and consolation, collected during the years she has spent caring for the dying and their loved ones. From Elsa Cayat, the psychologist and Charlie Hebdo columnist killed in the 2015 terrorist attack, to Simone Veil and Marceline Loridan, ""the girls of Birkenau""; from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated in 1995, to Myriam, a New Yorker obsessed with planning her own funeral, to the author friend's Ariane and her struggle with terminal illness. In telling these stories and her own relationship to them, Horvilleur addresses death and dying with intelligence, humor, and compassion. Rejecting the contemporary tendency to banish death from our thoughts and discourse, she encourages us to embrace its presence as a fundamental part of life."

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9781609457952

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Reviews

"""A radiant book that, without sentimentality, invites us to celebrate life.""--Le Monde ""A hymn to the healing power of storytelling and the written word.""--Le Figaro ""Delightful and moving... Delphine Horvilleur finds the right words to describe our time and its ghosts.""--ELLE Magazine (France)"

"WINNER OF THE 2021 BABELIO PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION ""Horvilleur shows how it is possible to find language even for that which seems indescribable. Her deep reflections on mortality remind us that 'in death a place can be left for the living.'""--Kirkus Reviews ""Horvilleur has written an elegantly slim and majestically poetic book...in writing about death, she writes about the will to life as well.""--Religious News Service ""Without a doubt, one of the most beautiful and impressive books not only of the last year but of recent years.""--ABC (Spain) ""A radiant book that, without sentimentality, invites us to celebrate life.""--Le Monde ""Luminous.""--Infobae (Spain) ""One of today's most original voices of contemporary European Judaism.""--Avvenire (Italy) ""A hymn to the healing power of storytelling and the written word.""--Le Figaro ""Moving...Delphine Horvilleur finds the right words to describe our time and its ghosts.""--ELLE Magazine (France) ""The French intellectual...presents a non-male perspective we need in mainstream Jewish literature.""--Heyalma"

A radiant book that, without sentimentality, invites us to celebrate life. --Le Monde A hymn to the healing power of storytelling and the written word. --Le Figaro Delightful and moving... Delphine Horvilleur finds the right words to describe our time and its ghosts. --ELLE Magazine (France)

Author Information

Delphine Horvilleur is one of the few female Rabbis in France. She was ordained in America, as there was no possibility to study in France as a woman, and is the leader of the Liberal Jewish Movement of France. Her writings have appeared in the Washington Post and Haaretz. She lives in Paris. Lisa Appignanesi is the author of several critically acclaimed and prizewinning books on the history of madness and mind-doctoring, most recently Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love. She has written for the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, and the Observer. She is a former President of English PEN, chair of the Freud Museum, London, and the Royal Society of Literature.

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