FORTY afterlives: the thought of one is quite enough, yet as a literary conceit it is beguiling. In this collection of supershort tales, David Eagleman – neuroscientist by day, dark chronicler by night – has turned himself into a David Deutsch figure of the hereafter, but with a multi-afterverse rather than a multiverse.
Try the title story, where all your earthly experiences are reshuffled into category order: think 27 hours of continuous intense pain or six days clipping your nails. My favourite, though, is “Mirrors” – the process of death will never seem the same again.
Sum has been so well received, from …
