Dying the Good Death is a unique ethnography, the first to focus on the experiences of dying at the end of the life cycle. In a region of northern India, some people at the end of their lives leave their villages and travel to the Hindu holy city of Kashi to die. These pilgrims expect that by dying in Kashi they will obtain the spiritual reward of moksha--liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth.

Based on fieldwork conducted in Kashi's hospices or "mansions of liberation," Christopher Justice introduces us to a number of dying individuals and their families, providing rich and...