Virago Modern Classics

''A literary giant, and one of my absolute favourite writers'' TAYARI JONES, AUTHOR OF AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE

''An American writer with a powerful sense of vital inheritance, of history in the blood'' JOHN UPDIKE, NEW YORKER

''Eva''s silence, and her status here as legally insane, are eloquent testimony to the condition of being a woman in this man''s world'' KIRKUS REVIEWS

Eva Medina Canada sits in her psychiatric ward, silent and unremorseful. She has murdered her lover and they want to know why. Her memories weave back and forth over encounters with the men in her life - the schoolboy who played doctors and nurses with a dirty popsicle stick; her mother''s boyfriend; her cousin; her husband; a stranger on the bus. She''s been propositioned and abused for as long as she can remember.