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Winner of the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize, a searing novel of loss and resilience that illuminates the often-overlooked human dimension of the migrant crisis, re-imagining the border as a dreamlike purgatory bridging life and death.
In an unnamed Latin American country, a mysterious plague quickly spreads, erasing the memory of anyone infected. Angustias Romero flees with her family, but their flight is tragically cut short when she loses both her children. Consumed by grief, she finds herself within the hallucinatory expanse of Mezquite––a town corrupted by greed and populated by storytellers, refugees, and violent, predatory gangs.
Here, Angustias is finally able to lay her children to rest at the Third Country, a cemetery run by the larger-than-life Visitación Salazar and a refuge beyond suffering and fear. While Visitación remains defiant in her mission to care for the dead, the cemetery she oversees is the focal point of a bitter land dispute with Alcides Abundio, the most feared landowner of the border. Caught in this power struggle, Angustias and Visitación–friends and sometimes rivals– stand their ground on a frontier where the law is dictated by violence; a surreal territory whose very nature blurs the boundaries between life and death.
Exploring what we are capable of and how far we will go when we have nothing to lose, No Place to Bury the Dead confirms Karina Sainz Borgo's importance amongst the voices of modern Latin American literature, merging thriller, western, and classic tragedy in an unforgettable and urgent novel that won the 2023 Jan Michalski Prize.
"[A] rich and lyrical tale of desperation and redemption, set during an outbreak of a plague that causes amnesia...Throughout, Sainz Borgo applies stark poetry to the terrifying setting, where 'moans and cries attributed to ghosts sometimes masked executions and beatings.' It's a stunner." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[No Place to Bury the Dead] succeeds as a study of grief and the urge to create spaces fit to contemplate loss...Stark, intimate, and melancholy." —Kirkus Reviews
"This gripping drama, painted in vivid Latin American colors, turns into an unpredictable thriller that will make you put aside your most pressing affairs. At least, that's what happened to me." —Andrey Kurkov, award-winning author of Grey Bees and The Silver Bone
This information about No Place to Bury the Dead 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.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Lisbeth Salas
Karina Sainz Borgo was born and raised in Caracas. She began her career in Venezuela as a journalist for El Nacional. Since immigrating to Spain ten years ago, she has written for Vozpópuli and collaborates with the literary magazine Zenda. She is the author of two nonfiction books, Tráfico y Guaire (2008) and
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