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    The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
    The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
    The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
    Audiobook4 hours

    The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story

    Written by Edwidge Danticat

    Narrated by Edwidge Danticat

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A moving reflection on a subject that touches us all, by the bestselling author of Claire of the Sea Light Edwidge Danticat's The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story is 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, all the while shifting fluidly from examples that range from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to Toni Morrison's Sula. 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 Death is a book that will profoundly alter all who encounter it.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 11, 2017
    ISBN9781501955709
    The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story
    Author

    Edwidge Danticat

    Edwidge Danticat is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah's Book Club selection; Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist; The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner; and the novel-in-stories, The Dew Breaker. She is the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Diaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures, Haiti Noir and Haiti Noir 2, and Best American Essays 2011. She has written several books for young adults and children—Anacaona, Behind the Mountains, Eight Days, The Last Mapou, Mama's Nightingale, and Untwine—as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her memoir, Brother, I’m Dying, was a 2007 finalist for the National Book Award and a 2008 winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography. She is a 2009 MacArthur Fellow.

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    Reviews for The Art of Death

    4.5/5

    21 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I like this "Art of" series a lot—they're always thought-provoking, both in terms of writing and life in general, and add a bunch of books to my wish list (which is always a good thing). This one is no exception. Danticat does a good job with the subject, meditating on death and dying and their depictions in literature—well woven together and not maudlin or overly sentimental.
    • 5/5
      A surprisingly effective combination, this is both a memoir of the author's mother's death from cancer and an examination of the way different authors whose work she likes have depicted death. Considering the portrayal of death as art allows Danticat to explore this essential subject – its dread, allure, power, and the potent force its inevitability exerts on every other aspect of human life – from a variety of angles and with useful artistic distance. This intellectually valuable coolness is balanced and the book gains warmth and depth by the love and vulnerability illustrated in the sections about Danticat's time caring for her mother during her illness and dying. Thought provoking, powerful, and lovely.