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.