Death of an Ordinary Man

Sarah Perry

$49.99

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Jonathan Cape Ltd
02 October 2025

Memoirs; Coping with death & bereavement

An unflinching and profoundly moving account of caring until death, from Booker-Prize-longlisted Sarah Perry

Now I understand there are no ordinary lives - that every death is the end of a single event in time's history- an event so improbable as to be miraculous, and irreplaceable in every particular.

Sarah Perry's father-in-law, David, died at home nine days after a cancer diagnosis and having previously been in the good health. The speed of his illness outstripped that of the NHS and social care, so the majority of nursing fell to Sarah and her husband. They witnessed what happens to the body and spirit, hour by hour, as it approaches death.

Death of an Ordinary Man is an unstinting account of death by cancer, a reportage into the daily experience of caring, an exploration of the structural conditions of dying in the UK, and most importantly a testament to David's life, that of an ordinary man.

Unflinching and profoundly moving, Sarah Perry confronts the taboo surrounding death and shows us how to confront all of the terror and beauty that comes with the end of life - and how the saddest thing she has ever seen is also the best thing she's ever done.

By: Sarah Perry
Imprint: Jonathan Cape Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 222mm, Width: 138mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 400g
ISBN: 9781787336001
ISBN 10: 178733600X
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 02 October 2025
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Sarah Perry is the internationally bestselling author of the novels Enlightenment, Melmoth, The Essex Serpent and After Me Comes the Flood, and the non-fiction Essex Girls. She is a winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year Award and the British Book of the Year Award. Enlightenment was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025 and her other work has been nominated for major literary prizes including the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Folio Prize and the Costa Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.