Death Does Not Exist: What Science and Spirituality Can Teach Us About the Afterlife

by Stéphane Allix, Gretchen Schmid (Translator)

This provocative international bestseller follows the trail blazed by Raymond Moody's Life After Life, revealing what happens after we die, weaving first-hand experience with emerging scientific discoveries.

Death does not exist.

When we die, we don’t stop living. We change worlds.

What happens when we die? What happens to our consciousness? Does it outlive brain death? Those pressing and eternal questions overwhelmed French journalist Stéphane Allix when his brother passed away. So he decided to mobilize all of his skills and instincts as a journalist in an attempt to shed light on the mystery of our consciousness.

Written as a letter to his fifteen-year-old daughter in an attempt to explain her uncle's untimely death and its impact on his own understanding of reality, Death Does Not Exist weaves scientific breakthroughs with tales of the countless unexplained phenomena related to death (near-death experiences, extra-sensory perception) and personal experiences including a shamanic quest. This grand adventure leads toward inspiring revelations about the nature of the soul, suggesting that our consciousness has a spiritual dimension.

Death Does Not Exist is at once a forward-thinking assessment about recent discoveries and a truly inspiring personal story, offering comforting reassurance discovered over the course of Allix's journey to the farthest reaches of life.

352 pages, Hardcover

Published June 30, 2026

About the author

Reporter free lance, Stéphane Allix, a débuté dans le journalisme en rejoignant clandestinement à 19 ans les résistants afghans à l'occupation soviétique. Il en a notamment tiré un ouvrage, Carnets afghans (en collaboration avec Natacha Calestrémé, Robert Laffont, 2002). Ses investigations l'ont amené à s'intéresser à des sujets que peu de journalistes ont traités en profondeur, comme les routes du trafic d'héroïne entre le Croissant d'or et l'Europe (La Petite cuillère de Shéhérazade, Ramsay, 1998). Féru de sociologie et de géopolitique, cet enquêteur est aux antipodes du naïf qui se laisserait berner par des rêveurs.

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

This ran the risk of coming off like a boring textbook, but the author avoided that pitfall. It is a fascinating study of the experience of death, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences. The author is honest and open about his fears as he experiments with shaminism and the beliefs, rituals, and concoctions he imbibes in an effort to contact his deceased brother. He later experiments with LSD and meditation.

The book is written as a letter to his niece, Luna. She was a little girl when he began his research and, although he does mention the time lapse and her aging, it's still a little jarring when he's talking about his LSD research because I kept thinking he was talking to a little girl. Overall, I think he would have benefitted from dropping the epistolary framework. It likely helped him keep everything if fairly simplified terms, but was sometimes really distracting.

If you're interested in the subject of what happens after we die and the answers of modern Western religion aren't satisfying you, then this is the book you want to read.

I was able to review this book before publication because I received a copy of the audiobook as a bookseller signed up with Libro.fm.

[Meg Napier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Death Does Not Exist covers a wide array of ideas--something I think detracted from my overall enjoyment. One moment we're asked to think about the sorrows surrounding the death of a loved one, then a near-death experience, then parental responsibilities for raising conscientious children, a bit about meditation, and way too many moments are devoted to psychedelic drugs and shamanistic adventures in South America. And spoiler alert: the final message is . . . that death does not exist . . . because of love. Now this is a message that I happen to embrace, so I'm always open to new avenues for sharing it, but I found this book too scattered. One section in particular that discussed practices in ancient Greece was particularly hard to follow, and I found myself in the unusual position of wishing I had the text in front of me instead of only the audio version. Thanks to NetGalley for sending me an early review copy of the audiobook.

[Critter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an audio ARC.

This book is an interesting look at the topic of what comes after you die. I feel like this is something that we probably won't get a satisfying answer to and wont have the answer to until we die and experience it ourselves. I think the author tried to do an interesting thing with this book being addressed to his neice as well as exploring some of his own experiences around death and grief. This book has a good overview of the different topics surrounding death and what happens after that I frequently see. It is written in an interesting and engaging way. The narrator also did a great job with being engaging as well.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley for this review in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was a well written and surprisingly fast paced books integrating current scientific knowledge with a variety of consciousness and afterlife beliefs. I enjoyed listening to the audiobook and the narrator was well chosen. However, I found that this book is so much like many others on the marker it just felt redundant to me, albeit well written.