When Women Kill
Report an issue
Tell us what's wrong and we'll take a look.
Thanks – we got it. We'll review and follow up if needed.
A genre-bending feminist account of the lives and crimes of four women who committed the double transgression of murder, violating not only criminal law but also the invisible laws of gender.
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 Zerán offers a nuanced close reading of their lives and crimes, foregoing sensationalism in order to dissect how all four were both perpetrators of violent acts and 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 makes women lash out against the restraints of gendered domesticity, and how do we—readers, viewers, the media, the art world, the political establishment—treat them when they do?
Expertly intertwining true crime, critical essay, and research diary, International Booker Prize finalist Alia Trabucco Zerán (The Remainder), in a translation by Sophie Hughes, brings an overdue feminist perspective to the study of deviant women.
Alia Trabucco Zerán
Alia Trabucco Zerán was born in Chile in 1983. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for her MFA in Creative Writing at New York University and she holds a PhD in Spanish and Latin American Studies from University College London. Her debut novel, The Remainder was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2019. Her non-fiction title, When Women Kill won the British Academy Book Prize 2022 and was shortlisted for the National Books Critics Circle Criticism Award, and film rights have been sold. Her latest novel, Clean, is being translated into 15 languages. She won the Eccles Centre & Hay Festival Writer’s Award 2024 for her next project. She lives in Santiago.
More by Alia Trabucco Zerán
Sophie Hughes
Translated by
Sophie Hughes is the translator of over twenty books from Spanish. She has been nominated for the International Booker Prize four times, and in 2021 she won the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute Translation Prize. Her work has featured in the New York Times, The Paris Review, the Guardian, Granta, frieze and The White Review.
Why Readwise Books?
Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →