Vinciane Despret’s unique storytelling, woven with ethnography and family history, assembles accounts of those living their daily lives with their dead. She explores how the dead play an active, tangible role through those who are living, who might assume their place in a family or in society; continue their labor or art; or thrive from a shared inheritance or an organ donation. 

Vinciane Despret is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Liège and the Free University of Brussels. The original French edition of Our Grateful Dead ( Au bonheur des morts) won the prestigious Prix des Rencontres Philosophiques de Monaco. Her books include What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? and The Dance of the Arabian Babbler: Birth of an Ethological Theory, both from Minnesota.

Stephen Muecke is professor of creative writing at Flinders University, South Australia. His many translations include works by Gilles Deleuze, Roland Barthes, and Luce Irigaray.