Dirty Weekend - Hardcover

Helen Zahavi

3.68

1,068 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333547233 ISBN 13: 9780333547236

Publisher: Humanity Press/prometheus Bk, 1991

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Bella lives alone in a basement flat. A man threatens rape and mutilation. Trapped and afraid, she finds a way out by adopting a hard and ancient logic. Once embarked on a murderous path of vengeance, there is no stopping her. This is a first novel.

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From the Publisher:

'A brave, brilliant and beautiful book' - Julie Burchill

'As a literary turning-point, Dirty Weekend is significant; as a black comedy of very bad manners, it is sidesplitting; as a mimetic description of the revenge fantasies that women who have been sexually assaulted really do, if they are mentally healthy, experience, it is informative. But it would be a cop-out to explain this book as a refreshing metaphor for anything at all. It is, above all, an act; a warning.' - Naomi Wolf, New Statesman & Society

'If this book is given the serious feminist consideration which it deserves, it will cause uproar among us. Such uproar, division, grief and falling-out that one would prefer it had been released for, private reading only, among women only, and highly feminised women at that, before making it available to the general public. This book is that shocking... In the character of Bella, the humiliation and anger of Everywoman has been condensed, compressed and let explode against the oppressive weight of Everyman ... Helen Zahavi has a fatally attractive way with murderous words.' - Sunday Tribune

'Zahavi stares reality in the face and tells the truth. The message she brings is unpleasant and discomfiting, but it cannot be ignored. In the best books about murder we learn something valuable about the darkness within the human condition and maybe we catch a glimpse of ourselves. These books are all too rare. Dirty Weekend is one such book. Zahavi should stick around and scare some more bleak truth into the lies of men.' - Blitz

About the Author:

Helen Zahavi is a novelist and screenwriter and was born and educated in London. Her father came to England with the Polish Army during the Second World War, and her mother's parents came from Odessa. She worked as a Russian translator before becoming a writer, and has spent several years living in Paris.

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