By examining how people in other times have found powerful reasons to stay alive when suicide seems a tempting choice, she makes a persuasive intellectual and moral case against suicide.
The poems are psychological; tender and humane, and somehow ruthless. This is poetry that swarms with ideas, that revels in rhythmic intricacy and literary references, but is also clear as a bell, and tells marvelous stories.
This is an account of the world's greatest ‘intellectual virtuosos,' who are also humanity's greatest doubters and disbelievers, from the ancient Greek philosophers, Jesus, and the Eastern religions, to modern secular equivalents Marx, ...