The book
In this startling book, David Eagleman shows us forty possibilities of life beyond death. With wit and humanity, he asks the key questions about existence, hope, technology and love. These short stories are full of big ideas and bold imagination.
The Reviews
This stunningly original book is little more than 100 pages long. You can get through it in an hour, but you'd be mad to hurry, and you will certainly want to return to it many times . . . Sum has the unaccountable, jaw-dropping quality of genius. It seems exquisitely adapted to fill the contemporary longing for a kind of secular holy book.
Geoff Dyer, ObserverI suppose there could be people who dislike Canongate's latest find . . . those, dare one say it, without poetry in their souls. For the rest - the millions who even in a post-religious, secular society find themselves at unexpected moments wondering who or what God is, if he's not a little old man sitting on a cloud.
Mary Crockett, Scotsman
40 intriguing tales describing different heavenly scenarios . . . and all formidably imagined . . . Readers may discover much to appreciate - not least the lives they are living now, still so much better than some nightmares in these pages. ... quirky, occasionally unsettling ... never short of new new ideas, all of them rolled out with style.
Nicholas Tucker, IndependentClever, memorable stuff.
Lottie Moggach, The London PaperThis is as much an object of desire as an actual book . . . elegant, surreal and philosophically questioning, each story from neuroscientist Eagleman offers an inventive, thought-provoking blend of science and romance . . . sly wit, ingenuity and oddly acute insight into the vagaries of the human condition.
Tina Jackson, MetroBrilliantly realised, blazingly original, Sum isn't so much about the next life as this one. Eagleman's stories - parables? - a chilly reminder of our foibles and delusions.
Colin Waters, Sunday HeraldSUM is an imaginative and provocative book that gives new perspectives on how to view ourselves and our place in the world.
Alan Lightman, author of EINSTSUM is terrific. It's such a good idea that I was grinding my teeth all the way through wishing I'd thought of it first. The inventiveness, the clarity and wit of the prose, the calm air of moral understanding that pervades the whole thing, add up to something completely original. I hope Sum will be the great big hit it deserves to be.
Philip PullmanWitty, bright, sharp and unexpected . . . as surprising a book as I've read for years.
Every story is a new Heaven.
Brian Eno