The Simple Art of Killing a Woman

From bestselling Brazilian crime 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.

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.

‘A deeply affecting novel illuminating the costs of being a woman in a dangerous, misogynistic society.’ — Kirkus Reviews

‘The Simple Art of Killing a Woman vibrates with rage at femicide and glows with hallucinatory images of jaguars and Amazons.’ — Bücher am Sonntag