Remembering US author Joan Didion: a peerless prose stylist

Joan Didion will be remembered as a revered US author and essayist whose provocative social commentary and detached, methodical literary voice made her a uniquely clear-eyed critic of a uniquely turbulent time. Photo: AP

Joan Didion, the revered author and essayist whose precise social and personal commentary in such classics as The White Album and The Year Of Magical Thinking made her a uniquely clear-eyed critic of turbulent times, has died. She was 87.

Didion's publisher Penguin Random House announced the author's death on Dec 23. She died from complications from Parkinson's disease, the company said.