A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2025

A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR 2025

'A labyrinthine masterpiece' New York Times
'A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story' TIME 'Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory' Layla Martinez

beware of me, my love beware of the silent woman in the desert...

These are the words the Professor finds, scrawled in nail polish, above the mutilated corpse of a man.

She reports the crime to the police and becomes the first informant in an investigation led by the Detective, who has a newfound obsession with poetry. As the bodies of more men are discovered alongside cryptic lines of verse, it becomes clear that this is only one in a string of crimes - all connected, all with literary clues.

As the Professor becomes wrapped up in the murders, the boundaries of story - and of genre - break down. Can the Detective decipher the meaning of the poems in time to stop the spread of violence?

Translated by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers