An unexpectedly life-affirming novel about choosing to die, by National Book Award winner and bestselling author of The Friend

A woman visits a friend who is dying of cancer. Brilliant and stubborn, her friend makes a momentous request. She wishes to end her life on her own terms – and she wants the narrator’s help. Stricken, she agrees. ‘I promise,’ says the friend, ‘to make it as much fun as possible.’

What follows is an extraordinary tale of a friendship put to the greatest test: to witness, unflinching, its end. It is also a portrait of the way we live now, in a world endlessly troubled by crises, and the dramatically changing nature of human relationships in our time.

‘Love, death, friendship, compassion & SO MUCH wisdom. I just adore Sigrid Nunez’ PAULA HAWKINS

‘I was totally overwhelmed by this extraordinary novel. Even if it weren’t about a subject dear to my heart I would be equally thrilled by its grace and profundity. Sentence by sentence it’s a total joy – and sometimes, much to my surprise, laugh-out-loud funny’ DEBORAH MOGGACH

‘If the meaning of life is that it ends, Nunez gets to the nub of meaning in her brilliant novel. I loved it as much as The Friend’ SUSIE STEINER

‘When I open one of [Sigrid Nunez’s] novels, I almost always know immediately: This is where I want to be… What Are You Going Through is as good as The Friend, if not better’ New York Times