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An enchanting, illuminating, highly personal tour of some of the most iconic cemeteries of the world—part travelogue, part memoir, part hauntology by the author of Our Share of Night and "Buenos Aires's sorceress" (The New York Times)
"Enriquez is a queen of horror."—Los Angeles Times
"One of Latin America’s most exciting authors."—Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Mariana Enriquez has been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager, visiting them frequently, a goth flaneur taking notes on her aesthetic obsession as she walked among the headstones. But in 2013, when the body of a friend's mother who was dissapeared during Argentina's military dictatorship was found in a common grave, she began to examine more deeply the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest.
In this vivid, cinematic book, Enriquez travels North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting the catacombs of Paris, Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery, Elvis's grave at Graceland, the above-ground mausoleums of New Orleans, her hometown of Buenos Aires's Recoleta, and more. She investigates each cemetery's history, architecture, its dead (famous and not), its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors. Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, folklore, musicology, and literature, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez's obsession with cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards and tombstones she walks among. Exhilarating, unsettling, and unlike anything else, Enriquez's first work of nonfiction is as original and enthralling as the stories and novels for which she's become so admired and beloved.
"Enriquez is a queen of horror."—Los Angeles Times
"One of Latin America’s most exciting authors."—Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Mariana Enriquez has been fascinated by the haunting beauty of cemeteries since she was a teenager, visiting them frequently, a goth flaneur taking notes on her aesthetic obsession as she walked among the headstones. But in 2013, when the body of a friend's mother who was dissapeared during Argentina's military dictatorship was found in a common grave, she began to examine more deeply the complex meanings of cemeteries and where our bodies come to rest.
In this vivid, cinematic book, Enriquez travels North and South America, Europe and Australia, visiting the catacombs of Paris, Prague's Old Jewish Cemetery, Elvis's grave at Graceland, the above-ground mausoleums of New Orleans, her hometown of Buenos Aires's Recoleta, and more. She investigates each cemetery's history, architecture, its dead (famous and not), its saints and ghosts, its caretakers and visitors. Weaving personal stories with reportage, interviews, folklore, musicology, and literature, Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave is memoir channeled through Enriquez's obsession with cemeteries, revealing as much about her own life and unique sensibility as the graveyards and tombstones she walks among. Exhilarating, unsettling, and unlike anything else, Enriquez's first work of nonfiction is as original and enthralling as the stories and novels for which she's become so admired and beloved.