The search for immortality is ages old — but would you really want to live forever?

‘If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up.’ Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–81)

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that ideas and considerations of immortality arose initially towards the end of the Axial Age, approximately 800–300BCE, as the teachings of the great sages of that time, who included Buddha, Confucius, Socrates and Lao Tzu, were starting to be assimilated.

‘It is perfectly certain that the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will actually exist in another world,’ said Socrates, quoted by Plato in the Phaedo.

Now the eminent archaeologist Piotr Bienkowski, in his latest exemplary work, Where Airy Voices Lead: A short history of immortality (O-Books, UK £15.99 / US £25.95, May 2020), engages authoritatively with the meaning and significance of the universal theme of immortality as it has coursed through human society from the ancient world down to the present day.

I found it a deeply absorbing book, scholarly but easily accessible, impressive in its global range, finely attuned to the metaphysics if its subject matter, and convincing in its concluding argument that beliefs in an afterlife reflect the…