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No Place to Bury the Dead

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"[A] rich and lyrical tale of desperation and redemption . . . 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)

"[A] deeply felt meditation on migration, mourning and the simultaneous entanglement and estrangement of the living and the dead" —Los Angeles Times

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.

Translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer

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    • Library Journal

      July 1, 2024

      A memory-erasing plague spreads across a Latin American country, causing Angustias and her family to flee and leading to tragedy. Inspired by her reporting on the humanitarian crisis in her home country of Venezuela, journalist Borgo (It Would Be Night in Caracas) wrote the O. Henry Prize-winning story "Scissors," which has been expanded into this already award-winning novel. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      October 1, 2024
      Three women negotiate death, birth, and loss in a violent landscape. Sainz Borgo's second novel is set in a country where (as the title suggests) a cemetery is contested land. The so-called Third Country is administered by a sharp-edged, dark-humored woman named Visitaci�n Salazar, who handles the numerous deaths caused by a plague and a brutal cartel. Angustias, who is directed to Visitaci�n when her twin infant sons die from the plague, is soon drawn into her long-running feud with Abundio, the regional cartel leader, who resents Visitaci�n's fiefdom and her knack for avoiding his thugs. Angustias, whose husband left her after the twins' deaths and has few money-making options, finds a safe haven in the cemetery, where she cares for both the corpses and others seeking sanctuary, like Jairo, a musician who writes folk tunes about the region, and Consuelo, a barmaid who's pregnant and escaping her abusive partner. Sainz Borgo (who was born in Venezuela and now lives in Spain) alternates between third-person narration and Angustias' point of view, but in either case the mood is mordant and threatening ("Angustias" is Spanish for "anguish"), defined by clipped, terse sentences. That approach highlights the brutality of the environment, though it sacrifices precision--the roots of Visitaci�n's role as a cemetery caretaker aren't clear, and the occasional magical-realist touches (Visitaci�n has a constant "plague halo" of wasps above her head) are too passing to register deeply. Subplots involving Abundio's power struggles with a local mayor and sicarios are similarly broad-brush. But it succeeds as a study of grief and the urge to create spaces fit to contemplate loss. "I was only interested in keeping alive my memories of the babies I loved," Angustias thinks, and Sainz Borgo suggests that the rituals of burial are essential to valuing life. Stark, intimate, and melancholy.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 16, 2024
      Venezuelan writer Sainz Borgo (It Would Be Night in Caracas) serves up a rich and lyrical tale of desperation and redemption, set during an outbreak of a plague that causes amnesia. Angustias Romero’s twin baby sons have died. Her husband, Salveiro, lacking the funds for a proper burial, is content to leave the bodies in the morgue, while Angustias, evoking the plight of Sophocles’s Antigone, determines to provide the twins with a proper resting place. She turns to a squatter named Visitación Salazar, who runs an illegal cemetery on a plot owned by “corrupt thug” Alcides Abundio. Mezquite, the site of Visitación’s cemetery, is a lawless border town controlled by Alcides, who terrorizes the residents with the mayor’s complicity. As Alcides mounts a violent campaign to seize the cemetery from Visitación and those like Angustias who support Visitación in exchange for free burials, the novel morphs into an exciting crime thriller. The mysterious plague adds to the intrigue and the tension, breaking down trust between Angustias and the taciturn Salveiro, as she worries he’s become infected. 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.

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