No Place to Bury the Dead: A Novel

Winner of the Jan Michalski Prize and inspired by true accounts of the migrant crisis, a searing novel of loss and resilience that reimagines the border as a dreamlike purgatory bridging life and death.“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

In an unnamed Latin American country, a mysterious plague quickly spreads. Angustias Romero flees with her family, but their flight is cut tragically short when she loses both her children. Consumed by grief, she finds herself at the Third Country, an illegal borderland cemetery run by the larger-than-life Visitación Salazar.Here, Angustias is finally able to lay her children to rest and find refuge from the suffering and fear that has followed her. But as she begins to apprentice under Visitación, joining her mission to care for the dead, the cemetery becomes 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 defiantly 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, Karina Sainz Borgo draws on her experience covering the Venezuelan migrant crisis to craft an unforgettable and urgent novel. Blending magical realism, Westerns, and classical tragedy, No Place to Bury the Dead cements Borgo’s importance among the voices of contemporary Latin American literature.Translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Bryer