Afterlife

A kaleidoscopic meditation on grief, memory, and the uncanny, where dreams, histories, and forgotten encyclopedias blur the line between life and afterlife.

In this luminous novel, Angela Woodward chronicles the meaning of death, the illusions of truth, and the strange, shimmering persistence of the self beyond the ordinary boundaries of life. Through fictional encyclopedia entries, surreal vignettes, and personal narratives, Afterlife blurs fact and imagination, the material and the ghostly, with poetic precision and biting wit.

Woodward’s speaker journeys through museums of bird art, cults and conformity, environmental chemicals, and lost loves. What emerges is an elegiac, deeply intelligent inquiry into how we continue to haunt the world—and how the world haunts us back.

A work of literary art that will appeal to readers of experimental fiction, creative nonfiction, and lyric essay, Afterlife invites comparison to writers like Jenny Boully, W. G. Sebald, and Anne Carson. This book is ideal for readers drawn to feminist, hybrid, and formally inventive literature; for those fascinated by the interplay between language and grief; and for anyone who has ever felt the uncanny persistence of the past in corners of the present.