Sum : Forty tales from the afterlives

In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. Or you may find the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember. In some afterlives you are split into all your different ages, in some you are recreated based on your credit card records, and in others you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been.

In these wonderfully imagined tales—at once funny, wistful and unsettling—Eagleman kicks over the chessboard of traditional notions and offers us a dazzling lens through which to see ourselves here and now. His stories are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of hope, love and death that cuts through human nature at innovative angles.

Praise for Sum:

‘Witty, bright, sharp and unexpected… as surprising a book as I’ve read for years.’

Brian Eno

‘Books addressing huge topics don’t have to be long. Clocking in at just over 100 pages, David Eagleman’s mind-blowing Sum consists of forty dazzling brief visions of what might happen when you shuffle off this mortal coil…Eagleman is a true original. Read Sum and be amazed. Reread it and be reamazed all over again.’

Geoff Dyer, Time Magazine

‘A profoundly original piece of writing and some of it is very moving.'

Sydney Morning Herald

‘[A] slick and inventive collection of Borgesian teasers…a labyrinth of meticulously constructed puzzles. His visions of the hereafter are alternately comic and alarming, and sometimes both at once…These short, thought-provoking stories are animated by an intellect as graceful as it is cunning.'

Age