THE MURDERESS PB A FORMAT

Renowned as the inventor of modern Greek fiction, Alexandros Papadiamantis is a magical mythmaker and unflinching realist whose work looks forward to that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The Murderess is a bone-chilling book with the force of an Appalachian backwoods ballad. The Murderess is the story of old Hadoula, a peasant woman from the island of Skiathos-in the nineteenth century, when the story is set, as bitterly poor a place as anywhere on earth. Old Hadoula knows the burdens of women s lives and she knows the herbs that can remedy them; over the years many women have come to her in secret for help. She is both an outcast and a fixture of the community, and as the book begins she is trying to get her newborn granddaughter to stop crying so that her daughter can get some sleep. That s when it hits her: there s nothing worse than being born a woman-and she strangles the baby. This first killing is not the last, as old Hadoula unleashes the pentup fury and pity of a life in this stark tragedy of stunning force.