"Concerning the Future of Souls balances the extraordinary and the humble, the bizarre and the beatific, as Azrael-transporter of souls and the most troubled and thoughtful of the angels-confronts the holy impossibility of his task, his uneasy relationship with Death, and his friendship with the Devil. Over the course of these ninety-nine illuminations, a collection of connected and disparate beings--ranging from ordinary folk to grand, known figures such as Jung, Nietzsche, Pythagoras, Bach, and Rilke; to mountains, oceans, dogs, birds, whales, horses, butterflies, a sixty-year-old tortoise, and a chimp named Washoe--experience the varying fate of the soul as each encounters the darkness of transcendence in this era of extinction. A brilliant crash course in philosophy, religion, literature, and culture, Concerning the Future of Souls is an absolution and an indictment, sorrowful and ecstatic."--