A Very Easy Death

Simone de Beauvoir

Translated by Patrick O'Brian, with an introduction by Ali Smith

Long considered one of Simone de Beauvoir’s masterpieces, A Very Easy Death is a profoundly affecting, day-by-day recounting of her mother’s final days after she is hospitalized following a fall. Though a devout Catholic, her faith is subsumed by her terror of death, and as her body fails, she clings to life with fierce, primal desperation. In depicting her mother’s refusal to ‘go gentle’ while her autonomy and dignity are taken from her, Simone de Beauvoir ‘shows the power of compassion when it is allied with acute intelligence’ (Sunday Telegraph). Powerful, touching and sometimes shocking, this is an end-of-life account that no reader is likely to forget.

‘True and deeply moving.’

— Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature

‘The mother of 20th-century feminism.’

— Joanna Biggs, London Review of Books

‘In every decade of my life since my 20s, I have been awed, confused, intrigued and inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s attempt to live with meaning, pleasure and purpose.’

— Deborah Levy, author of Real Estate