David Eagleman in Conversation

The minutiae of life can be boxed down to a list of statistics; 30 years tucked up in bed, 200 days in the shower, five months reading dog-eared magazines on the toilet, three years having sex – and so on, right down to that single minute you probably spent considering eating a mouldy grape.

As a practising neuroscientist, David Eagleman, author of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, has spent a considerable amount of time dealing with the statistical side of life and, hearing him discuss his bestselling novel, it seems fiction – and particularly the theme of the afterlife – has provided a fresh outlet.

He has chosen a topic that is often approached with an air of certainty, but instead deals with it in an original, creative and often whimsical way. Over the course of an hour he reads two of his short stories, answers questions from host Richard Holloway and introduces recorded readings from his new-found celebrity admirers, Nick Cave and Stephen Fry.

Searching questions abound. If your afterlife is determined by your living life, will it be agony free? Would it be any fun to come back as a horse? He gently unravels the threads of possibility and, as the discussion lingers, new ideas and questions arise.

Sum is a ‘trigger’ book that puts a lens on life and raises questions, rather than making assertions. And where the tools of science may sometimes run to a halt, fiction and the power of thought can take you anywhere.