Five Best: Visions of the Afterlife

The piece spotlights Emmanuel Swedenborg, the Swedish mystic born in 1688, describing how his ideas on the afterlife were laid out in the 1758 work Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell. It frames Swedenborg as not treating his subject metaphorically, drawing attention to accounts that include conversations with angels, periods of sojourn in limbo, and a detailed journey involving the world of the damned. The article ties these elements to authorial themes discussed through the novel Cloud Six, where the author reflects on the imaginative and experiential quality of Swedenborg’s accounts of heaven and hell.