Morgue : The Paris Morgue and the Lost Stories of the Unknown Dead

by Byers, Catriona | France
Published 02/02/2027 by Simon & Schuster UK
Paperback |
234 x 153mm | 0g

Peer through the enormous window and you will see twelve marble slabs.

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.