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This engaging and thought-provoking book has a capacious range that includes those who believe there is no afterlife and spans time from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to our current scientific, psychological, and religious thinking about what we imagine--or hope--happens after death.--Paula R. Backscheider, Philpott Stevens Eminent Scholar, Auburn University Regina Janes has written a brilliant, inquisitive, polymath essay to explain why the afterlife required inventing and what the results may show about the diversity and consistency of human nature. For adventurous wit on a forbidding terrain, this book has no precedent and will allow no imitator.--David Bromwich, Yale University Regina Janes' Inventing Afterlives is a breezy but well-informed romp through the ages as cultures from those of primitive humans to those of the digital age do what the title of this manuscript states, invent afterlives, telling their members what to expect, or, as in our own age, telling them what cannot happen even if the space or site of the afterlife gives writers a perfect setting to stage righteous justice or cynical evasion.--Daniel T. O'Hara, Temple University Inventing Afterlives is an intensively researched and brilliant book. The question of what humans have made of the afterlife is fascinating and Janes, who knows more about this subject than any scholar living (or, dare I say it, dead), has achieved something like completeness in her survey of the material.--Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University

Inventing Afterlives is an intensively researched and brilliant book. The question of what humans have made of the afterlife is fascinating and Janes, who knows more about this subject than any scholar living (or, dare I say it, dead), has achieved something like completeness in her survey of the material.--Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University

This engaging and thought-provoking book has a capacious range that includes those who believe there is no afterlife and spans time from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to our current scientific, psychological, and religious thinking about what we imagine--or hope--happens after death.--Paula R. Backscheider, Philpott Stevens Eminent Scholar, Auburn University Regina Janes' Inventing Afterlives is a breezy but well-informed romp through the ages as cultures from those of primitive humans to those of the digital age do what the title of this manuscript states, invent afterlives, telling their members what to expect, or, as in our own age, telling them what cannot happen even if the space or site of the afterlife gives writers a perfect setting to stage righteous justice or cynical evasion.--Daniel T. O'Hara, Temple University Inventing Afterlives is an intensively researched and brilliant book. The question of what humans have made of the afterlife is fascinating and Janes, who knows more about this subject than any scholar living (or, dare I say it, dead), has achieved something like completeness in her survey of the material.--Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University

Regina Janes' Inventing Afterlives is a breezy but well-informed romp through the ages as cultures from those of primitive humans to those of the digital age do what the title of this manuscript states, invent afterlives, telling their members what to expect, or, as in our own age, telling them what cannot happen even if the space or site of the afterlife gives writers a perfect setting to stage righteous justice or cynical evasion. -- Daniel T. O'Hara, Temple University Inventing Afterlives is an intensively researched and brilliant book. The question of what humans have made of the afterlife is fascinating and Janes, who knows more about this subject than any scholar living (or, dare I say it, dead), has achieved something like completeness in her survey of the material. -- Blakey Vermeule, Stanford University Regina Janes has written a brilliant, inquisitive, polymath essay to explain why the afterlife required inventing and what the results may show about the diversity and consistency of human nature. For adventurous wit on a forbidding terrain, this book has no precedent and will allow no imitator. -- David Bromwich, Yale University This engaging and thought-provoking book has a capacious range that includes those who believe there is no afterlife and spans time from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to our current scientific, psychological, and religious thinking about what we imagine-or hope-happens after death. -- Paula R. Backscheider, Philpott Stevens Eminent Scholar, Auburn University

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Regina M. Janes is professor of English at Skidmore College. Her books include Gabriel García Márquez: Revolutions in Wonderland (1981); One Hundred Years of Solitude: Modes of Reading (1991); and Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture (2005).

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