This truly magnificent text is a living monument to the strength and elegance of true ethnographic work... Students of culture, history of religions, India, and, frankly, of any discipline will learn much from this sensitive and powerful approach to inquiry. Essential."

Choice

"Gripping and mind-bending... a deeply fascinating book on many levels that demands attention from the reader, and an ability to change how we think about the spirit world and meanings of modernity."

Telegraph India

"This is an extraordinary book in two senses: it is an outstanding work of scholarship, and it is a highly original, unconventional piece of writing... the effect on the reader is devastating.  It moved me as much as anything I have read in a literary work of recent years... I am hard put to think of anything else quite like it."

American Ethnologist

"A monumental, impressive, and insightful work of ethnography, one that could only be produced by an ethnographer of Vitebsky’s evident skill, self-awareness, and endurance."

International Journal of Hindu Studies

"A book that offers deep reflections on and insights into fundamental questions about the predicament of human beings in times of change."

Social Anthropology

"All anthropologists should read this dazzling book."
 

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute

"Brilliant."

Anthropology and Medicine

"Extraordinary richness . . . a joy to read . . . Vitebsky makes a case for the importance of the diversity of human religious thinking (‘theo-diversity’) as a parallel to the importance of bio-diversity. "                                                                                   

Anthropology of This Century

"A fusion of horizons beyond what even Gadamer might have imagined."

History and Anthropology

"Living without the Dead is not only a study with an unusually deep tem- poral approach to cultural change; it is also a perfect illustration of what ethnographic fieldwork is about. . . . Beyond the richness of its ethnographic material and specificity, this volume should be of interest to scholars attracted to cultural change, religious transformation, and ethnographic epistemology in general due to the author’s exposure of himself while doing research, the masterful construction of his ethnographic analysis, and his depiction of the clear dynamicity of Sora life over time."

Religion and Society

“Incomparable. Fortunate are the Sora to have an ethnographer of such surpassing, immersive understanding. Fortunate are the students of history and religion to be shown how animism, shamanism, and conversion to monotheisms are actually experienced and understood. Fortunate beyond words are we all to have Vitebsky’s summum for generations of scholars.”

James C. Scott, Yale University

“This is a magnificent contribution to anthropology at once in time and over time—keeping faith with people’s continuing lives while traversing the epochs that have transformed them forever.  Unswerving in his commitment to the task, Vitebsky brings together compassion, analytical insight and blunt speaking.  And the magic of this account is not least in the way his subjects give the world a fresh view on world religions.”

Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge

"This fabulous, empathetic and deeply moving account of Sora loss and longing is among the best that anthropology has ever offered. Vitebsky’s beautiful prose introduces us to the meaning of conversion not just for faith but for landscapes, old conversations which are silenced and new ones which are beginning. He takes us to a world most people don’t know existed, and whose defeat readers will mourn deeply."

Nandini Sundar, Delhi University

"A haunting and elegiac exploration of attitudes to dying, death and grieving among the Sora of Odisha. Combining deep ethnography with masterful storytelling, Vitebsky has produced a classic of South Asian anthropology that at the same time speaks to the human condition everywhere."

Dilip Menon, University of Witwatersrand