The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead

So pure and wide in its implications that I think of it almost as a secular, unsentimental Kahlil Gibran: a textbook for the acceptance of our fate on earth

Breathtaking . . . Shields had us laughing out loud, even in the face of death

Mix equal parts of anatomy and autobiography, science and self-disclosure, physiology and family history; shake, stir, add dashes of miscellany, pinches of borrowed wisdom, simmer over a low-grade fever of mortality, and a terrible beauty of a book is born

Shields is a sharp-eyed, self-deprecating, at times hilarious writer

David Shields is the author of nine other books, including Reality Hunger and Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been translated into a dozen languages. 
 
www.davidshields.com

Mesmerized and somewhat unnerved by his 97-year-old father's vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an original investigation of our flesh-and-blood existence, our mortal being. 
Weaving together personal anecdote, biological fact, philosophical doubt, cultural criticism, and the wisdom of an eclectic range of writers and thinkers - from Lucretius to Woody Allen - Shields expertly renders both a hilarious family portrait and a truly resonant meditation on mortality.

David Shields

Highly persuasive. I can't stop recommending it

The most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010. It's a book that feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go

Bold, entertaining, contentious. Essential reading for readers and writers

A Manifesto

Reality Hunger questions every assumption we ever made about art, the novel, journalism, poetry, film, TV, rap, stand-up, graffiti, sampling, plagiarism, writing, and reading. In seeking to tear up the old culture in search of something new and more authentic, it is the most vital book of the new century.

David Shields

Praise for Reality Hunger

Highly persuasive. I can't stop recommending it

The most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010. It's a book that feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go

Bold, entertaining, contentious. Essential reading for readers and writers

Highly persuasive. I can't stop recommending it

The most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010. It's a book that feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go

Bold, entertaining, contentious. Essential reading for readers and writers

Highly persuasive. I can't stop recommending it

The most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010. It's a book that feels at least five years ahead of its time and teaches you how to read it as you go

Bold, entertaining, contentious. Essential reading for readers and writers

Books by David Shields

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter