Living with Our Dead

(Paperback)

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Description

In this moving and engaging book by one of France's few female rabbis and leader of the country's Liberal Jewish Movement, Delphine Horvilleur recounts eleven stories of loss, mourning, and consolation, collected during years spent caring for the dying and their loved ones.

From Charlie Hebdo columnist Elsa Cayat, to Simone Veil and Marceline Loridan, "the girls of Birkenau"; from Yitzhak Rabin, to Myriam, a New Yorker obsessed with planning her own funeral, to the author friend's Ariane and her struggle with terminal illness, Horvilleur writes about death with intelligence, humour, and compassion. Rejecting the contemporary tendency to banish death from our thoughts, she encourages us to embrace its presence as a fundamental part of life.

Drawing from the Jewish tradition, 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.

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 (France)

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Author Bio

Delphine Horvilleur 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 AppignanesiOBE FRSL is an award-winning author of non-fiction and novels. Her latest work is the memoirEveryday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love.She has also worked on several translations and was a winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize. She was chair of the Booker International Prize 2017.