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My Cemetery Journeys
An enchanting, highly personal tour of some of the most iconic cemeteries of the world—part travelogue, part memoir, part "excursions through death," by the author of Our Share of Night and "queen of horror" (Los Angeles Times)
Cemeteries have great stories and sometimes I steal some for my books.
Mariana Enriquez—called by The New York Times a "sorceress of horror"—has been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager. She has visited them frequently, a goth flaneur taking notes on her aesthetic obsession as she walks among the headstones, "where dying seems much more interesting than being alive."
But when the body of a friend's mother who was disappeared during Argentina's military dictatorship was found in a common grave, Enriquez began to examine more deeply the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest.
In this rich book of essays—"excursions through death," she calls them—Enriquez travels through North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting Paris's catacombs, Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery, New Orleans's aboveground mausoleums, Buenos Aires's opulent Recoleta, and more. Enriquez investigates each cemetery's history and architecture, its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors, and, of course, its dead.
Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, myths, hauntology, and more, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez's passion for cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards and tombstones she tours. Fascinating, spooky, and unlike anything else, Enriquez's first work of nonfiction, translated by the award-winning Megan McDowell, is as original and memorable as the stories and novels for which she's become so beloved and admired.
"An eccentric and enlightening peek into how memorialization happens across the world." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fascinating ... Enriquez hides a celebration of life in a book about death." —Booklist (starred review)
"Quietly, hypnotically amusing." —Kirkus Reviews
"Enriquez's luminous prose (translated by McDowell) and innate curiosity about cemetery folklore, histories and final resting places of the famous and obscure could make thanatophiles of us all." —The Los Angeles Times
"In the brilliantly written Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, it's easy to share Enriquez's sense of wonder and delight as she visits some of the world's most unforgettable cemeteries. With a knack for finding beauty and meaning in the obscure and offbeat, the author brings these burying places—and the quirky characters within them—to vivid life. Traveling with Enriquez in this enlightening, funny, and at times poignant book is like taking an adventure with your most interesting friend. I devoured every page." —Greg Melville, author of Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America's Cemeteries
"A triumph of curiosity! Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is one of those marvels that shows how dark, joyful, and mesmerizing the world is when the brave go looking. I'm a longtime fan of Mariana Enriquez, and this book delivers everything (and more) that I love about her writing." —Gerardo Sámano Córdova, author of Monstrilio
This information about Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
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