‘The Violet Hour’ grapples with death by starting at the last chapter of five writers’ lives

Susan Sontag, writer and intellectual, died Dec. 28, 2004, at age 71.

(Wyatt Counts/ Associated Press)

March 4, 2016 12 PM PT

Children’s books author Maurice Sendak on Sept. 6, 2011, at his home in Ridgefield, Conn.

(Mary Altaffer / Associated Press)

Professor Sigmund Freud, then 82, arrives at Victoria station in London on June 6, 1938, from Paris.

(Eddie Worth / Associated Press)