The Inevitable: Stories of Life, Choice and the Right to Die

Description

'Powerful and moving. Engelhart recounts the stories of those she meets with humanity and grace.' - Louis Theroux Meet Adam. He's twenty-seven years old, articulate and attractive. He also wants to die. Should he be helped? And by whom? In The Inevitable, award-winning journalist Katie Engelhart explores one of our most abiding taboos: assisted dying. From Avril, the 80-year-old British woman illegally importing pentobarbital, to the Australian doctor dispensing suicide manuals online, Engelhart travels the world to hear the stories of those on the quest for a 'good death'. At once intensely troubling and profoundly moving, The Inevitable interrogates our most uncomfortable moral questions. Should a young woman facing imminent paralysis be allowed to end her life with a doctor's help? Should we be free to die painlessly before dementia takes our mind? Or to choose death over old age? A deeply reported portrait of everyday people struggling to make impossible decisions, The Inevitable sheds crucial light on what it means to flourish, live and die.

Katie Engelhart is a reporter and documentary film producer from Toronto and based in New York City. She is also a National Fellow at New America. Katie has worked as a correspondent for VICE News, based in London, and NBC News in New York. Her writing has appeared far and wide. Formerly, she was a graduate student of history and philosophy at Oxford University. This is her first book.

'There's plenty of compassion, plenty of nuance and plenty of complex thought. Engelhartis a skilled storyteller... Her brilliant book should be prescribed to all those who thinkthey have a clear view [on the right to die].' - Sunday Times 'Powerful and moving. Engelhart recounts the stories of those she meets with humanityand grace.' - Louis Theroux, bestselling author of Gotta Get Theroux This 'Deeply researched and beautifully reported... [Engelhart] writes compassionately of hersubjects' struggles.' - The Economist 'A brilliantly sensitive and deeply moving account of assisted dying.' - Stephen Westaby, Sunday Times bestselling author of Fragile Lives