Sara Stridsberg revisits and reimagines the sad, strange life of Valerie Solanas: writer, radical feminist and would-be assassin of Andy Warhol. Translated by Deborah Bragan-Turner.

In April 1988, Valerie Solanas died alone and penniless. She was only 52, alone and surrounded by the typed pages of her last writings. Stridsberg goes to the hotel room where Solanas’ body was found, the courtroom where she was convicted of attempting to murder Andy Warhol, the Georgia wastelands of her atrociously abusive childhood, and the mental hospitals that interned her. Through imagined conversations and monologues, Stridsberg reconstructs this enigmatic woman, giving a powerful, heartbreaking voice to the gifted writer of the infamous SCUM Manifesto.

"... a shimmering and nuanced portrait of the ideals Solanas might have held, and a life that could have brought her to that understanding. The gentleness and strength of Stridsberg’s writing lends itself perfectly to this deeply empathetic novel. Most of all, in the story’s refusal to seek easy answers, its dedication to acknowledge and address the difficulties of its own construction, and its belief in the power of writing all make Valerie a book and a portrayal that I think Solanas herself would be proud of ..."  -  Ian J. Battaglia, The Chicago Review Of Books

Sara Stridsberg was born in Solna, Sweden, in August 1972.  She is a writer and playwright. Her second novel, The Faculty of Dreams, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and her novels have four times been shortlisted for Sweden’s August Prize. The Gravity of Love – Ode to My Family, has been sold in 15 languages and was the 2015 Swedish winner of the European Prize for Literature.