No Place Left to Bury the Dead: Denial, Despair and Hope in the African AIDS Pandemic

by Nicole Itano

Book Overview

EVERY DAY in Africa, approximately 7,000 men, women, and children are erased from the face of this planet by the devastating AIDS virus that -- even after more than two and a half decades -- continues... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743270959
• ISBN13: 9780743270953
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

An easy read on a difficult topic

Ms. Itano's work makes the complex challenge that HIV/AIDS poses to southern Africa and the world at large understandable to the lay reader. She blends personal stories with lessons on history, culture, and medicine, making AIDS personal for her readers. Her characters are compelling, and her personal relationship to and concern for them is evident. I'm looking forward to her next book.

The title of this book is very fitting for the situation in South Africa

I visited South Africa in 2006 so I feel this book is very relevant to my experiences there. If you want to learn about truth and suffering, and step back into reality, this is the book that will help you do that. There is truly no place left to bury the dead in South Africa.

read this book

I am amazed I haven't heard more buzz about this book ... it's a great book and I'm so happy I read it. But it's not the happiest of subject matters obviously. Despite the No Place Left to Bury the Dead title, this book details the struggles people, particularly women, LIVING with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa experience. HIV/AIDS in Africa is no longer an automatic death sentence but there are too few people getting HIV/AIDS tests, too much stigma and far too many people are not getting the treatment they need due to a number of issues including money, lack of knowledge, stigma and most importantly lack of a proper health care infrastructure. It may frustrate the reader that the book doesn't have an official ending or happy notes on the book's main characters ... but I guess that's reality unfortunately. Buy this book! Pamela Appea

Like reading a movie in the making

Itano's extraordinarily personal reporting and the powerful narrative it produced makes this book seem like a movie on paper. You have the sense that one day you'll see characters like Rich Uncle Isaacs, Adeline, and Bongy come to life on the silver screen. It packs a powerful emotional wallop and brings Africa to life in all its amazing colors. Could easily be the next Constant Gardener.

Powerful, Important, Insightful

The story of HIV/AIDS is, in the end, the story of people. Nicole Itano's wonderful book brings that truism to life on each page, explaining how a slow-burning virus changes the lives of three people in southern Africa, the epicenter of the pandemic. I spent eight years in Africa and found AIDS one of the hardest stories to tell. How do you write the same story from a new angle? How do you keep people interested when it's so easy for them to turn away? With news stories there's a definite beginning, middle and end. The story of HIV/AIDS is more like a terrible, melting glacier. We can take snapshots of it as the story changes but getting an idea of its unremitting destruction---and our attempts to slow that destruction---is much harder. A book actually lends itself much better to explaining AIDS and its effects. Read this one. Deeply researched and well written it adds a lot to our understanding of one of the most important stories of our time. (Full disclosure, I'm a friend of Nicoles and am thus a little biased. Doesn't stop me from recommending this book, though!)