Descripción
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Esquire, Marie Claire
«Deeply rewarding . . . a dreamscape with a powerful undertow . . . [a] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece.» —Katie Kitamura, The New York Times «Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert». This verse by Alejandra Pizarnik is written in nail polish on an alley wall, next to the mutilated corpse of a man. The first to discover it is Professor Cristina Rivera Garza. After notifying the police, she is interrogated by a homicide detective who asks her to examine a photograph of the crime scene. Immediately recognizing the verse, the professor becomes a key informant in the case. Soon, new victims appear alongside other poems, pointing to a serial killer. The detective begins a list of suspects, while the professor receives the first sinister note from someone who is stalking them. First published in 2007, Death Takes Me is a visionary and thrilling novel. Written by the Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the most relevant literary voices in the Hispanic world, Cristina Rivera Garza, this story challenges the traditional tropes of the detective novel and, like a mirror, reflects unsettling questions about desire and death. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION New York Times Notable Book of 2025 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer, a dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence.
"Deeply rewarding . . . a dreamscape with a powerful undertow . . . [a] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece."--Katie Kitamura, The New York Times (Editors' Choice) A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Esquire, Marie Claire
A city is always a cemetery. A professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police. When shown a crime scene photo, she finds a stark warning written in tiny print with coral nail polish on the brick wall beside the body: "Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert." The professor becomes the first informant on the case, which is led by a detective newly obsessed with poetry and trailed by a long list of failures. But what has the professor really seen? As the bodies of more castrated men are found alongside lines of verse, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems to put a stop to the violence spreading throughout the city. Originally written in Spanish, where the word "victim" is always feminine, Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative of gendered violence on its head. As sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims, it unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the police station to the professor's classroom and through the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art in an imaginative exploration of the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.
Author: Cristina Rivera Garza
Publisher: Literatura Random House
Published: 03/03/2026
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
ISBN13: 9786073867566
ISBN10: 6073867565
Language: Spanish
BISAC Categories:
- Body, Mind & Spirit | Inspiration & Personal Growth
- Self-Help | Personal Growth | Success
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
«Deeply rewarding . . . a dreamscape with a powerful undertow . . . [a] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece.» —Katie Kitamura, The New York Times «Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert». This verse by Alejandra Pizarnik is written in nail polish on an alley wall, next to the mutilated corpse of a man. The first to discover it is Professor Cristina Rivera Garza. After notifying the police, she is interrogated by a homicide detective who asks her to examine a photograph of the crime scene. Immediately recognizing the verse, the professor becomes a key informant in the case. Soon, new victims appear alongside other poems, pointing to a serial killer. The detective begins a list of suspects, while the professor receives the first sinister note from someone who is stalking them. First published in 2007, Death Takes Me is a visionary and thrilling novel. Written by the Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the most relevant literary voices in the Hispanic world, Cristina Rivera Garza, this story challenges the traditional tropes of the detective novel and, like a mirror, reflects unsettling questions about desire and death. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION New York Times Notable Book of 2025 From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer, a dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence.
"Deeply rewarding . . . a dreamscape with a powerful undertow . . . [a] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece."--Katie Kitamura, The New York Times (Editors' Choice) A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Esquire, Marie Claire
A city is always a cemetery. A professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police. When shown a crime scene photo, she finds a stark warning written in tiny print with coral nail polish on the brick wall beside the body: "Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert." The professor becomes the first informant on the case, which is led by a detective newly obsessed with poetry and trailed by a long list of failures. But what has the professor really seen? As the bodies of more castrated men are found alongside lines of verse, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems to put a stop to the violence spreading throughout the city. Originally written in Spanish, where the word "victim" is always feminine, Death Takes Me is a thrilling masterpiece of literary fiction that flips the traditional crime narrative of gendered violence on its head. As sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims, it unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the police station to the professor's classroom and through the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art in an imaginative exploration of the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.
Author: Cristina Rivera Garza
Publisher: Literatura Random House
Published: 03/03/2026
Pages: 352
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
ISBN13: 9786073867566
ISBN10: 6073867565
Language: Spanish
BISAC Categories:
- Body, Mind & Spirit | Inspiration & Personal Growth
- Self-Help | Personal Growth | Success
- Biography & Autobiography | Memoirs
About the Author
Cristina Rivera Garza. Autora. Traductora. Crítica. Sus libros más recientes son Autobiografía del algodón (Literatura Random House, 2020) y Grieving. Dispatches from a Wounded Country (The Feminist Press, 2020, traducido por Sarah Booker, finalista del NBCC Award). En 2020 obtuvo la MacArthur Fellowship. Profesora distinguida y fundadora del doctorado en Escritura Creativa en español en la Universidad de Houston.