Dirty Weekend - Softcover

Zahavi, Helen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1480278009 ISBN 13: 9781480278004

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012

Synopsis

Terrorised and alone in a basement flat, Bella overcomes her fear and transforms herself from victim to avenger. Over the course of a very dirty weekend she goes out in the night and kills seven men and one myth.

The men make the mistake of attacking her. The myth is that only women bleed.

• 'An act of writing that is avant-garde in the literal sense. A literary turning-point' - Naomi Wolf, New Statesman & Society
• 'A dark and brilliant book' - The Daily Telegraph
• 'Glinting, rapier wit' - Publishers Weekly
• 'Taut prose, black humour and a confrontational style make this a challenging and terrifyingly funny first novel' - Time Out
• 'I can still remember the visceral shock I felt as a young single woman reading Helen Zahavi's first novel - Louise Doughty, Wall Street Journal

About this title

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1480278009
• ISBN 13: 9781480278004
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 203