Running a cemetery is perhaps not the most obvious route to becoming a bestselling author. But that’s exactly what happened to Benoît Gallot. The curator of Père-Lachaise, the famous cemetery in Paris, Gallot drew praise for his 2022 memoir, La vie secrète d’un cimetière; the book grew out of the buzz he generated in sharing photos of the burial ground during the quiet of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. Happily, the English-language edition, translated by Arielle Aaronson, is coming out this spring. The Secret Life of a Cemetery: The Wild Nature and Enchanting Lore of Père-Lachaise (Greystone Books, April 29) doesn’t just explore the history and allure of the world’s most visited cemetery; it’s also replete with Gallot’s witty and humane observations about his workplace—and about death itself. Our review calls the book “delightful and thoughtful.”
The Secret Life of a Cemetery is among a host of new books from beyond U.S. borders that are worthy of our attention. Another is by Gallot’s fellow Parisian, Taha Siddiqui. Co-authored by illustrator Hubert Maury and translated by David Homel, The Dissident Club: Chronicle of a Pakistani Journalist in Exile (Arsenal Pulp Press, April 22) is a graphic memoir that dramatically recounts Siddiqui’s tumultuous childhood in Saudi Arabia and his dangerous work as an investigative journalist in Pakistan, his ancestral homeland. Having fled Pakistan after a failed attempt to kidnap him, Siddiqui now lives in the French capital, where he runs a bar and event space that gives the book its name: the Dissident Club. Our starred review praises the “rousing” memoir: “There’s a lot of heavy subject matter in the book—Siddiqui’s life is threatened, and colleagues are killed—but he can be very funny.”
Another excellent graphic memoir that’s out this spring is by Swedish author Joanna Rubin Dranger. Like Maus, the prize-winning graphic novel that inspired Rubin Dranger in her youth, Remember Us to Life (Ten Speed Graphic, April 8) examines the lives of the author’s Jewish relatives during and after World War II; she also creatively weaves in the extensive research she undertook for the work. Our review says the book, translated by Maura Tavares, is “a beautifully introspective account of a Jewish author learning about her roots—and a dark side of Swedish history.”
An author who has long straddled two cultures is Yoko Tawada, who was born in Japan and has lived in Germany for decades. In her latest book, translated by Lisa Hoffmann-Kuroda, she investigates what it’s like to write in a second language. The practice gives her collection of short essays its title: Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue (New Directions, June 3). Our critic describes it as “a playful journey toward the space between languages.”
For her first book, Arati Kumar-Rao traveled throughout India to document the environmental crises that threaten her country. “We are on the cusp of a humanitarian disaster of colossal proportions,” she writes in Marginlands: A Journey Into India’s Vanishing Landscapes (Milkweed, Feb. 11). Kumar-Rao’s “heartfelt, observant chronicle,” wrote our critic, is the author’s plea for all of us to wake up.
John McMurtrie is the nonfiction editor.
