New Extracted from: http://www.nagel-kimche.ch/foreignrights/
Mariella Mehr
Angeklagt

Standing Trial
 144 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket

Nagel & Kimche, Editors, Zürich (Switzerland)
 

Publication date: February 26, 2002

The canton of Berne (Switzerland) has given Mariella Mehr a book award for this novel! (June 24, 2002)
 
Arrested on charges of murder and arson, a young woman, Kari Selb, confronts the court-appointed psychologist with an impassioned monologue about her mental health, her past and her life. In this inflammatory speech, Kari gradually lays bare the fantasies of a serial killer who created her own guardian angel, an "angel to do the dirty work": Malik

Malik is the tough woman, brutal in her derision of the world, whom Kari needs to prevent her-self from going under. Supported by Malik, she defends herself with brute force. By the age of 25, she has already stabbed three people to death and set more than 100 fires. Her motives and the consequences of her deeds are unclear even to the narrator but, goaded by the psychologist's questions, Kari breaks down in a frenzied and breathless confession - with no one to give her absolution. Her report gradually outlines the mental and physical destruction of a woman who, without fitting into categories such as "insane" or "guilty", has found her own language - violence.
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