'Part memoir, part true crime, wholly brilliant' – Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

'As gripping as a thriller' - Literary Review

When law student Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is asked to work on a death-row hearing for convicted murderer and child molester Ricky Langley, she finds herself thrust into the tangled story of his childhood. As she digs deeper and deeper into the case she realizes that, despite their vastly different circumstances, something in his story is unsettlingly, uncannily familiar.

The Fact of a Body is both an enthralling memoir and a groundbreaking, heart-stopping investigation into how the law is personal, composed of individual stories, and proof that arriving at the truth is more complicated, and powerful, than we could ever imagine.

Winner of a Lambda Literary Award and the Chautauqua Prize

'This book is a marvel' - Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts

'Gripping and fascinating' - Sophie Hannah, author of The Couple at the Table

Prizes

Short-listed for CWA Dagger for Non-Fiction 2018 (UK),Long-listed for The Gordon Burn Prize 2017 (UK)

A haunting memoir of murder, revenge and dark family secrets * Sunday Times *
Shocking, chilling, unforgettable * Mail on Sunday *
Compulsive, eloquent and profoundly troubling. One of those rare books which embrace the genuine complexity of real life -- Mark Haddon, author of
Utterly remarkable . . . It isn’t just that the writing can be beautiful (the author has a very nice way with cemeteries, which is just as well because she visits enough of them), it isn’t just her coruscating honesty, it is that she understands how very partial the stories we tell ourselves are -- David Aaronovitch * The Times *
An extraordinary book, weaving as it does the story of the author’s own childhood abuse at the hands of a grandfather into the (also true) story of a convicted child killer on death row in whose retrial she is involved. It’s a complex, difficult, essential read -- S.J. Watson * Observer Books of the Year *
Part memoir, part true crime, wholly brilliant. Bleak subject matter is expertly handled as Marzano-Lesnevich challenges us to see both perpetrators and victims from every possible angle -- Paula Hawkins * Observer Books of the Year *
One of the most fascinating, satisfying, moving, uplifting books I’ve ever read -- Lucy Mangan * Stylist *
The Fact of a Body is excellent. So gripping and fascinating -- Sophie Hannah, author of The Couple at the Table
This book is a marvel. With unflinching precision and immense compassion, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich peels apart both a murder case and her own experience to reveal how we try to make sense of the past. The Fact of a Body is equal parts gripping and haunting and will leave you questioning whether any one story can hold the full truth -- Celeste Ng, New York Times bestselling author of Our Missing Hearts
The Fact of a Body is a remarkable act of witness, an anatomy of silence and the violence it abets, a book of both public and private accountings. Rejecting the false comfort of certainty, it confronts the inadequacy of all our tools for fathoming not just unforgivable crimes, but the baffling, human grace that can forgive them. This is a profound and riveting book -- Garth Greenwell, author of Small Rain
As gripping as a thriller, The Fact of a Body is a disturbing work that explores the toughest questions of law and morality without offering any easy answers * Literary Review *
A powerful hybrid…The Fact of a Body is true crime that feels true -- Victoria Segal, The Sunday Times
I haven’t read anything quite like this before . . . we must congratulate Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich. She has made us understand things we might not have understood before -- William Leith * The Spectator *
The most compelling book I’ve read in a long time – if you liked the Serial podcast or Making a Murderer, it’s similarly addictive. However, it’s also intellectually exacting and rigorous, rather than salacious. A very fine balance -- Susie Steiner, author of Missing Presumed
[A] true-crime masterpiece . . . There are no easy conclusions in The Fact of a Body, but there are many moments of profound revelation * Vogue *

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in creative writing. The Fact of a Body won a Lambda Literary Award a Chautauqua Prize, the Grand Prix des Lectrices ELLE, the Prix des libraires du Quebec, and the Prix France Inter-JDD, an award for one book of any genre in the world. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in the New York Times, Oxford American, Salon and the anthology True Crime. She has a JD from Harvard, an MFA from Emerson and a BA from Columbia University. Alexandria lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she teaches memoir writing at Grub Street and also teaches graduate public policy students at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The Fact of a Body is her first book.