Death as part of a person's history

Penelope Lively's book Moon Tiger describes the last week of historian Claudia Hampton, who is dying in hospital. In her remaining few days she looks back over her varied life and the people remaining who were important to her. Fiercely independent, she has lived a life that was unconventional by the standards of her time, and personal experiences and historical events become intertwined in Claudia's mind as she approaches that moment in the history of the world with which she has been preoccupied throughout the novel: her final moment, where she seems to find peace:

”And then the rain stops. Gradually, the room is filled with light; the bare criss-crossing branches of the tree are hung with drops and as the sun comes out it catches the drops and they flash with colour—blue, yellow, green, pink. The branches are black against a golden orange sky, black and brilliant. Claudia gazes at this; it is as though the spectacle has been laid on for her pleasure and she is filled with elation, a surge of joy, of well-being, of wonder.

“The sun sinks and the glittering tree is extinguished. The room darkens again. Presently it is quite dim; the window is violet now, showing the black tracery of branches and a line of houses packed with squares of light. And within the room a change has taken place. It is empty.”

Moon Tiger, by Penelope Lively, was awarded the Booker Prize in 1987 and is published by Penguin Books.