Are we ever really prepared to face death, especially if we do not have faith in God, through whose bounty death can be viewed not as an end but a beginning? In these pages, one man, nearing the end of his turbulent life, addresses simply and eloquently this and many other poignant and pertinent problems relative to mortality - and immortality.

The man "dying without God" of the title is Francois Mitterrand, who for fourteen years was president of France, a complex and controversial figure who was not only a major political leader but a respected writer and thinker. What the public didn't know was that during both his seven-year terms as president he was battling prostate cancer. Only near the end of his second term did he publicly acknowledge his illness.

Thus for well over a decade he was a man for whom death had been a constant companion, and many of his policies and opinions were doubtless made and expressed in the full knowledge of his own life's brevity.

Born Catholic in a conservative provincial family, Mitterrand as an adult found his inquisitive and incisive mind unable to maintain his earlier faith, and he became a confirmed agnostic. As such, his opinions and comments take on a special meaning for those millions of people who, as the twentieth century draws to a close, also feel they can no longer fall back on the church or religion to answer their questions about mortality.