Nine Rules to Conquer Death
How should we conquer death? Our eternal existential question. The unspoken why of all action and thought.
Death is all around us but unseen. A shadow companion who haunts our gnawing anxieties over what the future holds. The virus. The stab of doubt in every lump beneath the skin. Can anyone overcome the fear of dying?
Drawing on the wisdom of the ancients, from the Aztecs and the Iliad to the Irish Wake, Nine Rules to Conquer Death provides the answer to those eternal mortal fears and longings. Kevin Toolis distils insights drawn from millennia of human experience into a profound and punchy guide to dying – and living – well.
Why life would be terrible if we did not die. Why we should embrace our mortality, and see the life-affirming necessity of sharing the company of the dead. Nine Rules up-ends every fear and presumption we hold about death to help us live a more authentic, fear-free life. Nine Rules is a guidebook like no other.
Kevin Toolis is a writer, BAFTA-winning filmmaker, Emmy nominee and bardic poet. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir My Father’s Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love and Die, a seminal work on Irish wakes, and Rebel Hearts, a highly praised chronicle of the Troubles in Ireland. Kevin has also written for the New York Times, Guardian, Observer and the Sunday Times.