A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2025

A TIME MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR 2025

‘A labyrinthine masterpiece’ New York Times
‘A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story’ TIME
‘Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory’ Layla Martinez

beware of me, my love
beware of the silent woman in the desert…

These are the words the Professor finds, scrawled in nail polish, above the mutilated corpse of a man.

She reports the crime to the police and becomes the first informant in an investigation led by the Detective, who has a newfound obsession with poetry. As the bodies of more men are discovered alongside cryptic lines of verse, it becomes clear that this is only one in a string of crimes – all connected, all with literary clues.

As the Professor becomes wrapped up in the murders, the boundaries of story – and of genre – break down. Can the Detective decipher the meaning of the poems in time to stop the spread of violence?

Translated by Sarah Booker and Robin Myers

This detective novel radically scrambles what we think of, and how we relate to, the genre ... The case [is] “full of psychological nooks and crannies. Of poetic shadows. Gender traps. Metaphors. Metonyms.” That also describes Rivera Garza’s exceptional style, and the deeply rewarding experience of reading Death Takes Me. The novel is dense and elliptical, a dreamscape with a powerful undertow ... [A] harrowing and labyrinthine masterpiece * New York Times *
A subversive twist on the traditional serial killer story * Time *
Rivera Garza, who won a Pulitzer prize last year for her memoir of femicide in Mexico, plays with form, blending fiction with an essay complete with footnotes, satirising media coverage, incorporating comments on the publication of the book we’re reading, and generally having fun. Her exuberance is contagious. “Reading shouldn’t be so complicated,” says one character. “A matter of turning the page.” Of course, it’s both * Spectator *
When is a novel not a novel, and when is a novel more than a novel? Death Takes Me, the new novel by Cristina Rivera Garza, juggles these ideas and doesn't let them drop in a story that is part crime fiction, part poetry, part thesis and so many things besides ... All those genres and ways of thinking can be found in this book -- Ian McMillan on 'The Verb'
Rivera Garza’s dazzling prose here becomes sharper than ever … Obsessive, dreamlike and hallucinatory, Death Takes Me lingers inside your brain long after you’ve read it -- Layla Martínez
An extraordinary, fiercely imaginative novel, written with the precision of a true master of her craft … I couldn’t put it down -- Juan Gómez-Jurado
The novel brilliantly melds the grit and pacing of a police procedural with literary theory ... It’s all seamlessly conveyed in Rivera Garza’s incisive and poetic style. Life and literature become one in this singular achievement * Publishers Weekly *

Cristina Rivera Garza is the award-winning author of The Taiga Syndrome and The Iliac Crest, among many other books. Her memoir Liliana’s Invincible Summer won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir and Autobiography and was a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, Rivera Garza is the M. D. Anderson Distinguished Professor in Hispanic Studies and director of the PhD programme in creative writing in Spanish at the University of Houston.