Author Description

'There’s a careful balance between beauty and despair, not just in the carefully crafted sentences but in the content. The depiction of the commodification of female sexuality is nuanced and haunting, never gratuitously bleak or polemical. In a storyline that involves a murder, a wrongful arrest, a riot and revenge, there’s space for love, for poetry, for hope. That Devi (and Zuckerman) get all of this into less than 200 pages is remarkable'- The Irish Times ‘Incredible, so poetic and visceral. Devi is a powerful and uncompromising writer but the moments of tenderness and humanity throughout made the lack of if all the more stark. I'm so glad it's been translated, we need more books like this on shelves!’ — Deirdre Sullivan, author of Tangleweed and Brine Two girls: Eve, whose body is her only weapon and source of power; Savita, Eve's best friend and the only one who loves her selflessly, has plans to leave but will not go alone. Two boys: Saadiq, gifted would-be poet, deeply in love with Eve; Clélio, the neighbourhood tough, waiting without hope for his brother to send for him from France. All are desperate to escape the cycle of fear and violence in which they are trapped.