The Inevitable

Dispatches on the Right to Die

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Pub Date 4 Mar 2021 | Archive Date 3 Mar 2021

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Description

'Powerful and moving.' Louis Theroux

Meet Adam. He's twenty-seven years old, articulate and attractive. He also wants to die. Should he be helped? And by whom?

In The Inevitable, award-winning journalist Katie Engelhart explores one of our most abiding taboos: assisted dying. From Avril, the 80-year-old British woman illegally importing pentobarbital, to the Australian doctor dispensing suicide manuals online, Engelhart travels the world to hear the stories of those on the quest for a 'good death'.

At once intensely troubling and profoundly moving, The Inevitable interrogates our most uncomfortable moral questions. Should a young woman facing imminent paralysis be allowed to end her life with a doctor's help? Should we be free to die painlessly before dementia takes our mind? Or to choose death over old age? A deeply reported portrait of everyday people struggling to make impossible decisions, The Inevitable sheds crucial light on what it means to flourish, live and die.

'Powerful and moving.' Louis Theroux

Meet Adam. He's twenty-seven years old, articulate and attractive. He also wants to die. Should he be helped? And by whom?

In The Inevitable, award-winning...


Advance Praise

'Powerful and moving. Engelhart recounts the stories of those she meets with humanity and grace.' - Louis Theroux, bestselling author of Gotta Get Theroux This 

'A brilliantly sensitive and deeply moving account of assisted dying.' - Stephen Westaby, Sunday Times bestselling author of Fragile Lives

'I couldn't stop reading. Katie Engelhart refuses to look away from death, or more accurately, from dying. The Inevitable challenges us to keep looking and asking hard questions, even if we are uncomfortable with the answers.' - Anne Marie Slaughter, author of Unfinished Business: Women, Men, Work, Family

'Katie Engelhart has addressed an important question with clarity and compassion, drawing on the experience of individuals who, in their choices about when and how to die, teach us that a dignified and peaceful death adds value to life.' - A. C. Grayling, bestselling author of The Good Book 

'If your much-loved dog is suffering and incurable, you ask a vet to end her life peacefully and painlessly. It is the moral thing to do. But for you and me it is different. In the transition to our peaceful oblivion, we are condemned to endure a purgatorial interlude of more or less protracted dying. There is a legal double standard. Katie Engelhart ably sets out the case for the right to choose when to die. I find it hard to imagine how a decent and rational person could resist it.' - Richard Dawkins

'A vital, gripping, deeply reported book, on what for us all of, sooner or later, is the most important topic in our lives.' - Ben Judah, bestselling author of This is London

'An urgent and important book by a gifted young writer. With enormous empathy and rigor, and in lucid prose, Katie Engelhart grapples with the fundamental question of philosophy-judging whether or not a life is worth living. Wherever you fall on the debate over the right to determine one's own time and manner of death, The Inevitable will force you to re-examine your deepest assumptions about euthanasia and what it means to live and die with dignity.' - Thomas Chatterton Williams, Contributing Writer of The New York Times Magazine

'Powerful and moving. Engelhart recounts the stories of those she meets with humanity and grace.' - Louis Theroux, bestselling author of Gotta Get Theroux This 

'A brilliantly sensitive and deeply...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781786495648
PRICE £15.99 (GBP)

Average rating from 6 members


Featured Reviews

A riveting, incisive, and wide-ranging book about the Right to Die movement, and the doctors, patients, and activists at the heart of this increasingly urgent issue.

As a nurse who has worked in emergency care, palliative care, and now intensive care, the storyline resonated well with me. This book is very thought-provoking and full of feeling. It does not matter which side of the debate you are on, it is worth a read. The author is straight to the point and makes you look at your own views and feelings and appreciate how you may feel if you were in the same situation as those she talks about.

This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of her work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

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Thought-provoking and full of feeling.

It makes you look inward at your own views and personal preferences, whilst trying to understand that of others, in various different positions and stages of life.

It took me a while to get through this book. Purely because the subject matter is so intense and sensitive. Katie Engelhart's writing is very matter of fact and to the point, which I actually think is needed. Less fussing around and trying to avoid the subject.

An interesting read, no matter which side of the debate you stand.

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