Timor Mortis: How We Live with Death. A clarification of what truly matters

There’s something extraordinary about Chloe Aridjis’s writing in The Shadow of the Object, a quality both intoxicating and unsettling. It almost reads like an overly precise and thus mildly unheimlich translation of another’s work.

It is not a traditional medical memoir, nor is it a neat linear narrative. What makes it shine is its interdisciplinary approach and the author’s candour. Coker draws from far and wide in the pursuit of his attempt to understand what he thinks about death and dying, a subject he admits to being “obsessed with”.

He draws on medical, historical and psychological perspectives, and weaves in his clinical and personal experiences, giving a rich and expansive view, imbued with a welcome intellectual and psychological humility. The reader is offered few absolutes; instead they will likely be left more curious, more questioning.