{"id":261315,"date":"2026-01-01T08:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/261315\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T08:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:12:13","slug":"mariana-enriquez-explores-hidden-stories-of-the-dead-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/261315\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariana Enriquez explores hidden stories of the dead \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somebody is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys <\/strong> <\/p>\n

Author:<\/strong> Mariana Enriquez<\/p>\n

ISBN-13:<\/strong> 978-1803511290<\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong> Granta<\/p>\n

Guideline Price:<\/strong> \u00a320<\/p>\n

Old graveyards inspire imagination for writers as they reveal details of past lives and historical records. For the Argentinian<\/a> writer, Mariana Enriquez, her trips to cemeteries have become an obsession as she has spent 25 years visiting burial sites across the world. Enriquez\u2019s work, which includes gothic fiction, short stories and a novel, is published in English and includes the International Booker-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. <\/p>\n

The standalone chapters in her new work cover 21 locations from North and South America, Australia and Europe. In Louisiana, she finds that New Orleans<\/a> has the greatest number of graveyards in any conurbation in the world. While there, she searches for the grave of Marie Laveau, the city\u2019s 19th-century voodoo queen. Guides tell her that after Elvis\u2019s Graceland, Laveau\u2019s grave is the second-most visited in the US. <\/p>\n

The white tomb is covered in trios of Xs drawn in pen, lipstick, eyeliner and chalk; conservationists point out that it is illegal to leave marks on a historic place so with the tip of her index finger she draws Xs representing an ancient sign symbolising the intersection between the spirit world and the living. <\/p>\n

A fascinating chapter is her exploration of the Trevelin Cemetery in Patagonia. It is the final resting place of the Welsh community who emigrated to the Chubut Valley in the 19th century to escape English religious, linguistic and political persecution. The author finds that the Welsh graves have an overwhelming proliferation of surnames such as Jones, Thomas and Evans, but is frustrated by the lengthy epitaphs in Welsh. <\/p>\n

In town, she asks an old man to help her interpret the significance of the wording but he detests his parents\u2019 language, which he spoke as a child and has happily forgotten. <\/p>\n

The author\u2019s itinerary also includes Prague\u2019s oldest Jewish Cemetery, the Aboriginal burial ground on Western Australia\u2019s Rottnest Island, Paris\u2019s catacombs, and Highgate Cemetery in London where she encounters Karl Marx and tales of vampires. As well as interviews, she weaves in personal stories of the graveyards providing descriptions of their history and architecture. <\/p>\n

Enriquez\u2019s book is in the style of a travel-writing pilgrimage, but is also part memoir with digressions into myths, legends, saints and ghosts, often with surprising laconic humour. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Gabriel Byrne searching for \u2018simple\u2019 Irish burial place, festival toldOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Somebody is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys Author: Mariana Enriquez ISBN-13: 978-1803511290 Publisher: Granta Guideline Price:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[394,1879,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,134533,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-261315","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-argentina","9":"tag-book-reviews","10":"tag-breaking-news","11":"tag-breakingnews","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-new-orleans","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115818839664172881","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}