Morgue
The Paris Morgue and the Lost Stories of the Unknown Dead
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
Morgue
Pre-order Now for £16.58
-
Narrated by:
On each slab lies a corpse.
For over one hundred years, from 1804, the unidentified dead of Paris were publicly displayed at the world’s first morgue. Wherever they were found, their bodies were brought to the morgue and laid out for exhibition in the hope that one of the many visitors – over one million a year – might identify them.
Structured around twelve overlapping stories, reflecting the twelve slabs in the display room, Morgue unspools a gripping and immersive narrative of a city in turmoil and a society in flux. Across five themed sections – crime, science, society, art and memory – Byers explores topics as diverse as death tourism, the sex trade, queer life, surveillance policing, the birth of forensics, the invention of photography and the rise of gothic literature.
Through the long-forgotten deaths – and lives – of ordinary people, Morgue offers an astonishing and intimate account of the birth of modernity.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Critic reviews
‘This gripping, indeed often thrilling, work by Catriona Byers proves that well-researched, pacily written works of sociological history can indeed make crackingly good books. The way that corpses in all their multifarious conditions have been used by her effectively to write a history of 19th century Paris is nothing short of brilliant’ (Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon and His Marshals)
No reviews yet