“It’s not death that creates suffering; it’s suffering that creates the desire or the need to die.”

Eduardo Berti’s An Ideal Presence, translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, compiles a series of slightly fictionalized and lightly interwoven testimonials from the staff and volunteers of a hospital’s palliative care unit. As they ruminate on their personal experiences, their methodologies, their attachments and aversions and ways of looking after themselves after the shift is over, what emerges is a uniquely empathetic and humane portrayal of care at the end of life, by turns philosophical and pragmatic but always compassionate.