Nigel Barley

249 S. 19 cm

"Dancing on the Grave takes a fresh look at the astonishing variety of ways in which cultures around the world have handled death and given it meaning. Some cultures, most famously Ancient Egypt, have virtually bankrupted themselves to deal adequately with the death of a single person. Others, such as the nomadic peoples of southern Africa, have done little more than simply pull down the roof on to the corpse and walk away, while wrapped bodies in Torajan houses are used as handy shelves to store cassettes. Expertly guiding the reader through such diverse areas as myths about death, beliefs about ways to mourn, joking at funerals, post-mortem videos, cannibalism, headhunting and royal mortuary ritual, Nigel Barley shows how even the most exotic can be related to broader themes relevant to us all." "Both personal and, as one would expect of this author, wittily exploratory, Dancing on the Grave gives an account of mortality that is far from depressing, is indeed a celebration of human ingenuity."--BOOK JACKET.

Gardens are magical places -- images of Nature and Culture, models of paradise, spaces where plants live in war and peace, co-operation and competition. It is 1942 and Singapore is Syonanto, part of the Japanese Empire, where violence and starvation stalk the streets but in the Singapore Botanic Gardens a bizarre tranquillity reigns between warring nations and even love awakes as old identities melt away in the heady atmosphere of the Orchid House. From its unique perspective and with a mixture of humour and romance, this book pictures a formative moment in the emergence of Singapore, where loyalties are less secure than those of the official histories and truth is anything but simple.