Claudia Pineiro for Time of the Flies

"Pineiro is delightfully successful at marrying the joy of a crime novel with the intelligence, and deep characterization, of literary fiction." ~ Words Without Borders

Life after crime from the International Booker-shortlisted author of Elena Knows...

Born in Buenos Aires in 1960, Claudia Piñeiro has won numerous national and international prizes, including the Pepe Carvalho Prize, the LiBeraturpreis for Elena Knows and the prestigious Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Prize for Las grietas de Jara (A Crack in the Wall).

Many of her novels have been adapted for the big screen, including Elena Knows for Netflix. Piñeiro is the third most translated Argentinean author after Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortazar. She's also a playwright and scriptwriter (including popular Netflix series The Kingdom). Her novel Elena Knows was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

Fifteen years after killing her husband's lover, Ines is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and they've started a business - FFF, or Females, Fumigation, and Flies - dedicated to pest control and private investigation, by women, for women.

But Senora Bonar, one of their clients, wants Ines to do more than kill bugs - she wants her expertise, and her criminal past, to help her kill her husband's lover, too.

Crimes against women versus crimes by women; culpability, fallibility, and our responsibilities to each other - this is Piñeiro at her wry, earthy best, alive to all the ways we shape ourselves to be understandable, to be understood, by family and love and other hostile forces.

"Time of the Flies is orchestral: a page turner that is also a crime novel, a thriller, a meditation on feminism, our choices, our lack of choices. As Pineiro unpacks her Pandora box of stories, voices, preoccupations, characters, you wonder, how on earth will she weave them together?" ~ Julia Alvarez