An eye-opening, entertaining and thought-provoking account of a mortician's journey around the world to discover how other cultures care for their dead --- 'Think Bill Bryson doing an underworld special' THE TIMES

A thought-provoking and eye-opening account that goes in search of the cultures unburdened by fear of the dead, to highlight how they care for them. With curiosity and morbid humour, Doughty takes us to a candlelit Mexican cemetery and America's only open-air pyre.

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