Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave

In Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, Mariana Enriquez blends journalistic rigour and her fascination with the macabre as we encounter famous graveyards steeped in history, such as Montparnasse in Paris, Highgate in London, and the Jewish cemetery in Prague, as well as more remote, decrepit, hidden, or secretly beautiful ones. These pages are full of the graves of famous figures - Elvis in Memphis, Karl Marx in London - mournful sculptures, traces of voodoo, catacombs, skeletons and an array of legends and stories. Mariana's personal journey weaves through haunting narratives, transforming burial grounds into spaces of reflection, obsession, and emotional discovery between the living and the dead. From the haunting statues of Staglieno in Genoa to the eerie silence of Rottnest Island's hidden Aboriginal cemetery, Enriquez's narrative shifts effortlessly between travelogue, essay, and memoir. In her unique voice, cemeteries transform into living, breathing places of reflection, obsession and revelation. As she roams, each cemetery becomes a lens through which she examines everything from colonial violence to the strange rituals surrounding death.

In Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, Mariana Enriquez blends journalistic rigour and her fascination with the macabre as we encounter famous graveyards steeped in history, such as Montparnasse in Paris, Highgate in London, and the Jewish cemetery in Prague, as well as more remote, decrepit, hidden, or secretly beautiful ones. These pages are full of the graves of famous figures - Elvis in Memphis, Karl Marx in London - mournful sculptures, traces of voodoo, catacombs, skeletons and an array of legends and stories. Mariana's personal journey weaves through haunting narratives, transforming burial grounds into spaces of reflection, obsession, and emotional discovery between the living and the dead. From the haunting statues of Staglieno in Genoa to the eerie silence of Rottnest Island's hidden Aboriginal cemetery, Enriquez's narrative shifts effortlessly between travelogue, essay, and memoir. In her unique voice, cemeteries transform into living, breathing places of reflection, obsession and revelation. As she roams, each cemetery becomes a lens through which she examines everything from colonial violence to the strange rituals surrounding death.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD In Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, Mariana Enriquez blends journalistic rigour and her fascination with the macabre as we encounter famous graveyards steeped in history, such as Montparnasse in Paris, Highgate in London, and the Jewish cemetery in Prague, as well as more remote, decrepit, hidden, or secretly beautiful ones. These pages are full of the graves of famous figures - Elvis in Memphis, Karl Marx in London - mournful sculptures, traces of voodoo, catacombs, skeletons and an array of legends and stories. Mariana's personal journey weaves through haunting narratives, transforming burial grounds into spaces of reflection, obsession, and emotional discovery between the living and the dead. From the haunting statues of Staglieno in Genoa to the eerie silence of Rottnest Island's hidden Aboriginal cemetery, Enriquez's narrative shifts effortlessly between travelogue, essay, and memoir. In her unique voice, cemeteries transform into living, breathing places of reflection, obsession and revelation. As she roams, each cemetery becomes a lens through which she examines everything from colonial violence to the strange rituals surrounding death.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD In Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, Mariana Enriquez blends journalistic rigour and her fascination with the macabre as we encounter famous graveyards steeped in history, such as Montparnasse in Paris, Highgate in London, and the Jewish cemetery in Prague, as well as more remote, decrepit, hidden, or secretly beautiful ones. These pages are full of the graves of famous figures - Elvis in Memphis, Karl Marx in London - mournful sculptures, traces of voodoo, catacombs, skeletons and an array of legends and stories. Mariana's personal journey weaves through haunting narratives, transforming burial grounds into spaces of reflection, obsession, and emotional discovery between the living and the dead. From the haunting statues of Staglieno in Genoa to the eerie silence of Rottnest Island's hidden Aboriginal cemetery, Enriquez's narrative shifts effortlessly between travelogue, essay, and memoir. In her unique voice, cemeteries transform into living, breathing places of reflection, obsession and revelation. As she roams, each cemetery becomes a lens through which she examines everything from colonial violence to the strange rituals surrounding death.

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 ) "Not a travelogue so much as a grave-a-logue, Somebody is Walking on Your Grave is an exuberant, witty wander among the dead. You could not have a better friend to take you by the hand and lead you for a long traipse among tilting tombstones, dank crypts, and chilling history."--Joe Hill "Enriquez knows cemeteries are the repositories of life's pain and beauty. I felt more alive as I read."--Caitlin Doughty, New York Times bestselling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory "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 One of Publishers Weekly 's Top 10 New Releases of the Fall - A Most Anticipated Book of the Fall: Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, Publishers Lunch 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 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 ) "Not a travelogue so much as a grave-a-logue, Somebody is Walking on Your Grave is an exuberant, witty wander among the dead. You could not have a better friend to take you by the hand and lead you for a long traipse among tilting tombstones, dank crypts, and chilling history."--Joe Hill "Enriquez knows cemeteries are the repositories of life's pain and beauty. I felt more alive as I read."--Caitlin Doughty, New York Times bestselling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory "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 One of Publishers Weekly 's Top 10 New Releases of the Fall - A Most Anticipated Book of the Fall: Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, Publishers Lunch 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.