Description

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.

Publisher Review

Somebody is Walking on Your Grave is part-travelogue, part-memoir, part-history, myth and legend. Even readers who lack her taste for the macabre will be enticed by Enriquez’s infectious enthusiasm for her subject… [A] highly original book * Financial 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, when she does just enough, is pretty much unbeatable — A.K. Blakemore Enriquez’s talent and fearlessness is something to behold * Financial Times * Enriquez’s great gift that she can make stories with ugly subject matter so addictive and full of life * Observer * One of Latin America’s brightest stars * Telegraph * Full of dark romanticism, teasing the reader in a kind of danse macabre… A fascinating and provocative rendering of the stories of the dead and those who tend to them * The Skinny * Offers longtime readers a glimpse of Enriquez herself – funny, passionate, and sharp, a friend accompanying you through the dark * Cold Magazine * Enriquez’s interest in graves is not just morbid. She uses cemeteries as a lens through which to examine history and culture… After finishing her book, readers will have a new appreciation for tombs and the wealth of fascinating stories that lie six feet under * Economist *