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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

Caitlin Doughty

Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Fascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead.
In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather's mummified body. Grandpa's mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette- smoking, wish- granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved- ones' bones from cremation ashes. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America. Featuring Gorey-esque illustrations by artist Landis Blair,From Here to Eternityintroduces death-care innovators researching green burial and body composting, explores new spaces for mourning including a glowing- Buddha columbarium in Japan and America's only open-air pyre and reveals unexpected new possibilities for our own death rituals. Mortician Caitlin Doughtyhost and creator of "Ask a Mortician" and the New York Times best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyesfounded the death acceptance collective The Order of the Good Death and co-founded Death Salon. She lives in Los Angeles, where she runs her nonprofit funeral home, Undertaking LA.
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Published 2017-10-03 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

UK: Weidenfeld & Nicolson ; Simplified Chinese: Beijing Xiron Books ; Portuguese (Brazil): Darkside Etretenimento

Caitlin Doughty is razor sharp, and writes about death with exceptional clarity and style. From Here to Eternity manages to be both an extremely funny travelogue and a deeply moving book about what death means to us all.

In her jocular but reverential tone... Doughty doesn't offer a simple morbid travelogue; instead, she digs into diverse death experiences with deep veneration and examines ties to socioeconomic, status, female identity, and religion.

A thought-provoking book about the complicated, fascinating world of funerary practices. Unless you and your friends are immortal, this book pertains to you.

[Doughty's] fascinating tour of rituals contains liturgies that readers will surely observe as rare, macabre, unbelievable, ancient, and precious - sometimes simultaneously.

Doughty finds the humanity in others cultures' relationship with death that seems to be lacking in ours.

She is the ideal guide on this journey, curious and respectful...Recommended for fans of the author and those with an interest in anthropology and ritual.