The Murderess

On the poor Aegean island of Skiathos, an old healer and midwife, Hadoula, worn down by a life of hardship and by watching the burden that daughters are to poor families, comes to a terrible conclusion and begins to kill baby girls, then is hunted across the island to her death. Papadiamantis, a son of Skiathos, sets it all on his real island: the cramped town, the herb-strewn hills, the wells and ravines, the mountain chapels, and the sea between the rocks that finally claims her.

Hadoula

The town (Hadoula's house)

Chapter 1

The book opens with the sleepless old Hadoula rocking her sick infant granddaughter and brooding on a lifetime of poverty and the endless trouble that girls bring to families like hers. In the close, poor town, her monstrous logic takes shape: that to smother a baby girl is a mercy, and her descent into murder begins.

Chapter 1

inferred Hadoula lives in the poor town of Skiathos, the island's real Chora; her house is invented and sited among its cramped lanes above the harbour.

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