I Was Alive Here Once

A midwife is awoken one night to help a djinn give birth (Yemen). Ghosts of "loose-haired" women wander the newly erected border after the fall of the Soviet Union (Uzbekistan). A water ghost bound to a creek falls for the ghost of a girl wandering the surrounding forest, which is in danger of being destroyed (South Korea). With an expansive view of our haunted world, I Was Alive Here Once breathes new life into familiar tropes and brings fresh perspectives to the borderlands between life and death. In eight contemporary stories from eight different countries, this collection embraces the paradoxical nature of ghosts: as specters of collective memory or collective amnesia, as traces of our past or future, as vengeful or protective, victims or monsters.