When Women Kill

"When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold analyzes four homicides carried out by Chilean women over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on her training as a lawyer, Alia Trabucco Zerâan offers a nuanced close reading of their lives and crimes, foregoing sensationalism in favor of dissecting how all four were perpetrators of grievous violent acts at the same time as being victims of another, more insidious kind of violence. This radical retelling challenges the archetype of the woman murderer and reveals another narrative, one as disturbing and provocative as the transgressions themselves: what causes women to lash out against the restraints of gendered domesticity, and how do we-readers, viewers, the media, the art world, the political establishment-treat them once they do? Expertly intertwining true crime, critical essay, and research diary, International Booker Prize finalist Alia Trabucco Zerâan (The Remainder), in a translation by Sophie Hughes (Hurricane Season), brings an overdue feminist perspective to the study of deviant women"--