Elena Knows

In a single day, a journey across Buenos Aires reveals a daughter to her mother, a mother to herself, and the oppressive weight of received ideas to women connected by a fleeting encounter, twenty years before.
 
After Rita is found dead in a church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her sickly mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit. Chronicling a difficult journey across the suburbs of the city, an old debt and a revealing conversation, Elena Knows unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society.

"Piñeiro is AWESOME. Her books are dark, have buckets of atmosphere, and they all feel entirely different even though she revisits some of the same issues again and again. She deals with the culture and social structure within gated communities; shows how walling ourselves in seems safer, but actually promotes fear and claustrophobia; she deals with gender roles and prejudice and economic class and long-held secrets that fester." Book Riot

"A lyrical portrait of a woman unable to grieve... incisive commentary on Catholic society’s control of women’s bodies." Publishers Weekly

"A gloriously taut and haunting tale... astonishingly assured." Denise Mina, author of Gods and Beasts and The Long Drop 

"[Piñeiro's] words work a kind of magic only very masterful literature does." Lucy Writers

Born in Buenos Aires in 1960, Claudia Piñeiro is a best-selling author, known internationally for her crime novels. She has won numerous national and international prizes, including the Pepe Carvalho Prize, the LiBeraturpreis for Elena Knows and the prestigious Sor Juana Inés 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. Claudia Piñeiro is the third most translated Argentinean author, after Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar. More recently, she has become a very active figure in the fight for the legalisation of abortion in Argentina and Latin America, and for the recognition of employment rights for writers. Her fiction is rooted in the detective novel but has recently turned increasingly political.
 
Frances Riddle lives in Buenos Aires, where she works as a translator, writer, and editor. She holds an MA in translation studies from the University of Buenos Aires and a BA in Spanish literature. Her book-length publications include A Simple Story by Leila Guerriero (New Directions, 2017); Bodies of Summer by Martín Felipe Castagnet (Dalkey Archive Press, 2017); and The Life and Deaths of Ethel Jurado (Hispabooks, 2017). This is her fourth title for Charco Press after Slum Virgin by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (2017), The German Room by Carla Maliandi (2018) and Theatre of War by Andrea Jeftanovic (2020).