When she was diagnosed with cancer for the third time, the writer Susan Sontag signed on for a harsh treatment regime in the hopes it would keep her alive. But it only added to her suffering.

Her son, the noted journalist David Rieff, has published a memoir about his mother's "revolt against death" — and about what he describes as the unanswerable questions of a survivor.

Sontag died in 2004. Rieff's book is titled Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son's Memoir.

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