Inspired by the Kathchatourian sisters’ case, the novel explores contemporary Russia and questions men’s violence.

A Russian story, a French novelist: a story of love and death.

“If he beats you, it’s because he loves you,” says a Russian proverb.

A patricide

Sitting side by side in the entrance of a Moscow apartment, three young girls, aged seventeen to nineteen, wait for the police to arrive, a few meters from the inert body of their father Mikhail Khatchatourian. For years, he had been attacking them, insulting them, hitting them, abusing them, night and day. Until the three sisters had enough, and killed him.

A story that fascinates the narrator

When Laura Poggioli discovers this case, which has set the Russian media ablaze, she becomes fascinated by these young girls whose carefree faces conceal the torments they endured for years. She reconstructs their story, the silence of their relatives and the way in which the Russian police and justice system judge and condemn the three sisters for murder, refusing to grant them mitigating circumstances.

An intimate account of Russia

Laura Poggioli remembers her years in Moscow, shortly before this terrible crime. In high school she fell in love with the Russian language. She loved its romanticism and its harshness. There she met Marina, her dearest friend, and Mitya, her love who also was violent. The story of the young women takes her back to her youth in Moscow, to her relationship with men’s violence.

Between reality and fiction

Based on the elements of the investigation, Laura Poggioli imagines the life of the three sisters. She mixes the story of her own life with theirs, and constructs an intimate narrative that plunges us into the heart of today’s Russia, its shadows and its changing society.

« I discovered the Khachaturyan sisters during my last stay in Moscow, and I couldn’t get rid of them. I could not detach myself from them. I investigated this family, which has become the symbol of violence against women in Russia. Fiction allowed me to get out of the coldness of the news. This story awakened memories of my Russian years, when I lived in Moscow. I was twenty years old, I was in love and drunk with this country. »