A book about why someone chooses a life in which the dead are present daily? And is there an antidote to the fear of death?

Haley Campbell traveled the world for three years to interact with people whose professions involve death: pathologists, undertakers, agents, funeral directors, embalmers, students and old gravediggers already dug their own graves. She raked out bones and ashes with a crematorium worker, dressed a dead man, performed a brain autopsy, visited a cryonics center in Michigan, and worked with a homicide detective.

Why? To write about the phenomenon of death and answer questions that concern many and are inconvenient to ask.

Continuation of the theme of the book “Will my cat eat me?” and the recommendation of its author Caitlin Doughty. Translation from English by Vasily Gorokhov. Scientific consultant - Sergey Shigeev, MD, professor, chief specialist in forensic medical examination of Moscow and the Central Federal District of the Russian Federation.

From the author

Death, as well as those who made working with the dead his profession, began to fascinate me many years ago, and this interest runs like a thread through my life. They face every day the truth I could only imagine. The monster that hides in a nearby ventilation hatch, and about which nothing significant and concrete is said, always seems especially creepy, so I decided to find out what an ordinary human - not a bird's or a cat's - death looks like, not in photographs and not in movies.< /p>

But the more I talked, the more questions were asked of myself. What do you want to find here where you don't have to be? Why torture myself with this topic?

I considered myself invulnerable. This turned out not to be the case. I was right: I really lacked something. However, I naively underestimated the depth of the wound and the degree of influence of our attitude towards death on everyday life - how much it prevents not only understanding, but also mourning at the moment when everything collapses. I finally saw the reality of death and I can hardly express in words how much it transformed me. But there, in the darkness, I found something more. It's like a scuba diver's watch and stars on the ceiling of a child's room: the glow becomes noticeable in the dark.

Who is this book for

For those who want to learn about death, how it looks and how it accept.

For everyone who is terribly interested.

Published in Russian for the first time.