Inspired by E. M. Forster's thought that 'Death destroys a man but the idea of it saves him', The Black Mirror takes death as an external viewpoint from which we may see our lives more clearly.

Raymond Tallis looks back on his world from the standpoint of his future corpse. He reflects on the senses that opened up his late world, the elements they reveal, the distances, divisions and intimacies of space, the multifarious activities that occupied his days, his possessions, his utterances, his relationship to others, the extinguished flame that was his self, his journey towards the end, and his after-life either side of the grave.