A searing exploration of a woman’s hidden destructive impulses from one of the great writers of the twentieth century

‘There was no longer that ambivalent inconsistency between her words and thoughts, no more fever, no more artificial heat, no more vagueness. Instead was the truth in all its rawness, in black and white, in stark, cruel lines.’

Adrift and alone, Betty finds herself propped up at the bar of a sleazy establishment on the Champs- lysees. When an older woman takes her under her wing, Betty’s tortured past returns to haunt her- excluded by her high-society peers and overwrought with jealousy, she struggles with a desperate compulsion to tear her picture-perfect life apart.

Originally published in 1961, this gripping psychological thriller caused a sensation and inspired a film adaptation by Claude Chabrol.

‘A brilliant portrait of betrayal, hypocrisy, love and loss’ - Chicago Tribune