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The Simple Art of Killing a Woman

by Patrícia Melo

Translated from Portuguese by Sophie Lewis.

Published 2024

Paperback, 272 pages

Price: £12.99

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Quick take

The Simple Art of Killing a Woman is a psychological trip with a twist. It’s about the strength of individuals in the face of overwhelming violence, the problem of femicide in Brazil, and the haunting of a cold case.

Synopsis
Why we love it

Set between the Amazon rainforest and the Brazilian town of Cruzeiro do Sul, this novel follows the narrator as she becomes enmeshed in local femicide trials. Whilst undertaking a research project in the town, she witnesses terrible corruption and injustice against women and indigenous people. Following the outcome of the trial, turning her back on the new community she discovers there becomes impossible…

From bestselling novelist Patrícia Melo comes a masterful thriller that is by turns poetic, inspiring, humorous and harrowing.

To escape an overprotective family and an abusive partner, a young...

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From bestselling novelist Patrícia Melo comes a masterful thriller that is by turns poetic, inspiring, humorous and harrowing.

To escape an overprotective family and an abusive partner, a young lawyer accepts an assignment in the Amazonian border town of Cruzeiro do Sul. There, she meets Carla, a local prosecutor, and Marcos, the son of an indigenous woman, and learns about an epidemic of violence against women that seems beyond comprehension.

What she finds in the jungle is not only relentless oppression, but a deep longing for answers to an unsolved crime from her past. Through the ritual use of ayahuasca, she meets a chorus of warrior women on a path of revenge and recovers the painful details of her mother’s death.

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    • Femicide
    • Sexual assault
    • Domestic abuse
  • Patrícia Melo was born in 1962 and is a highly regarded novelist, playwright and scriptwriter. She has been awarded a number of internationally renowned prizes, including the Jabuti Prize 2001, the German LiBeraturpreis 2013 and the German Crime Award 1998 and 2014, and she was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and Time Magazine included her among the Fifty Latin American Leaders of the New Millenium.

  • The Indigo Press is an independent publisher of contemporary fiction and non-fiction, based in London. Guided by a spirit of internationalism, feminism and social justice, we publish books to make readers see the world afresh, question their...

    See all books by The Indigo Press