An open door, a pair of blue tennis shoes, the sharp smell of disinfectant in the room—a woman killed by twenty stab wounds. Another woman, a journalist in a private radio station, is conducting a survey on violence against women. And when she discovers that the victim lived in his own palace, she feels directly involved and starts a very personal investigation into the murder that cannot be separated from her investigation on violence.
Why, in fact, are so many women raped and killed? Why, so often, do they open the door, voluntarily, to those who attack them? Why is their fear of speaking so important for those who have been raped? In the end she finds her answers, and they’re unpredictable and shocking.

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Dacia Maraini is among the most important Italian writers. She is the author of many novels, short stories, plays, poetry collections, autobiographical narratives, and essays, published by Rizzoli, and her work has been translated and sold in twenty countries. In 1990 she won the Campiello Prize for La lunga vita di Marianna Ucrìa (The long life of Marianna Ucrìa, translated as The Silent Duchess, 1992), and the Strega Prize in 1999 for Buio. In 2011 she was named a finalist for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize, and she was awarded the Campiello Prize for her career in 2012.