Swimming In A Sea Of Death: A Son's Memoir

In spring 2004, Susan Sontag was diagnosed with an incurable blood cancer. She had a huge appetite for experience and a wild, extravagant desire to live.

Rieff writes movingly about being by her side during that last year and at her death, sharing his own contradictory emotions:

• His guilt for not consoling her enough.
• His guilt for somehow colluding with her in her belief that she could beat the disease.

Drawing on Sontag's journals and letters, which Rieff read after her death, and on the writings about the deaths of other great thinkers, Swimming in a Sea of Death provides:

• A vivid portrait of Sontag in the last year of her life.
• A haunting meditation on mortality.