»Less Than One is a clever mixture of crime thriller, social environment study, and social reportage, captivating and getting under your skin, with powerful language and convincingly drawn characters.«
ORF, „Ex Libris“

»It is words that, in Patrícia Melo’s work, have a social power to change things. For example, in newspaper articles or novels that talk about those who are all too often ignored. And Patrícia Melo once again shows how to do this in an inimitably gripping and convincing way.«
Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»Melo’s literary treatment of reality is masterful and reflects the essence of São Paulo – hard, dynamic, dirty, confusing. And despite the depressing subject, Less Than One is a captivating read.«
Buchkultur

»A tribute to the human will to do good, to hope for the rule of law and journalistic enlightenment, solidarity as a means of improving the situation. An appeal not to stop dreaming of a better world and to fight for it.«
Carola Torti, Der Freitag

»Less Than One is a gripping plea for more humanity. In every sentence you can feel the horror and controlled anger that Melo feels, not just in the face of political failure. She is equally angry at the indifference of the people in Brazil, the “suits” who walk over the homeless and ignore their suffering. This book is imbued with the belief that everyone can make a difference – and that there is an irresistible social power in words.«
Sonja Hartl, CrimeMag

»This is an elegant literary way to sabotage fixed world views.«
Thomas Wörtche, CrimeMag

»With a laconic writing – with her cutting literature, corrosive humor and the presence of constant violence, sometimes bringing death as a spectacle for those who read the works – the writer confirms her consolidation as a great author of Brazilian literature contemporary, representing characters of different classes, races, ethnicities, or sexual orientations. Thinking about these issues makes us understand the importance of this great author’s writing, as it makes the country’s marginalized and invisible peoples visible to the world, the animal-men, showing not only what is most beautiful, attractive and touristic, but revealing the true face behind what is sometimes deliberately hidden, ignored, that is, the speeches from the margins, by the margins.«
Alexandra Alves da Silva, Current Scientific Journal

»Less than One is a shock at our own image in the mirror, but one we cannot ignore if we want to change what we are so repulsed by.«
Rascunho

»A kind of Les Miseràbles à la Brazil. This is what Patrícia Melo’s new novel is. Great writers have this prodigious ability to show us a world we would never see. Less Than One is a necessary book.«
Digestivo Cultural

»Outstanding handling of language, surprising sketches in the handling of narrative, and brilliant approaches to all kinds of topics, especially those of political and social relevance.«
Saiba Mais

»I have been following the author’s works for some time and I think that few writers are able to express the poverty of the human soul as she does. In Less Than One we find corruption, failure of the state, cowardice, brutality, and all the force that crushes the less fortunate, but we also find tenderness and hope on the part of those who see humanity behind every image that is distorted by the evils of life. Only a genius like Patrícia Melo could put all of this weighty theme of social outcry into a book that is extremely fluid and easy to read.«
Diego Ribeiro, STALO

»This is a narrative with innumerable daily battles involving street vendors, parking attendants, the unemployed, drunks, and thieves. A clear and straightforward portrait of Brazilian tragedy.«
Jornal do Comércio

»In Less Than One Patrícia Melo exposes an invisible Brazil, the result of neglect, income inequality, and social violence.«
O Tempo, Belo Horizonte

»A gripping plea for more humanity. […] It is words that, in Patrícia Melo’s work, have a social power to change things. For example, in newspaper articles or novels that talk about those who are all too often ignored. And Patrícia Melo once again shows how to do this in an inimitably gripping and convincing way.«
Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»The Simple Art of Killing a Woman is a forceful book that hurts. The author spares no voices, stories, gory images capable of showing all the ferocity of violence. And she does so through real cases that came to court and then also through surreal images born of the protagonist’s dreamlike hallucinations.«
Corriere della Sera

»Herein lies the originality of the novel by Melo, who confirms herself among the leading current noir authors […].The novel is a merciless, even political, indictment, but what matters is that Melo is a writer with very clear ideas and a formidable rhythm.«
La Repubblica

»Reading, I could not turn away.«
Southwest Review

»Femicide in Brazil is the bleak, urgent backdrop to Patrícia Melo’s assured, profuse novel The Simple Art of Killing a Woman (translated with equal verve by Sophie Lewis).«
Catherine Taylor, The Irish Times

»Women rise defiant against misogynistic forces in the truth-filled novel The Simple Art of Killing a Woman. While the dead cannot be resurrected, lives might be spared with knowledge—and via feminist alliances.«
Foreword Reviews, Starred Review

»Brazilian author Melo weaves together crime, magical realism, mythology, and social criticism in this relevant and urgent translation from the Portuguese by Lewis. Though the subject is horrifying, especially in the details about marred and dismembered victims, the narrator’s voice is captivating and compelling, offering strength and purpose rather than despair. A deeply affecting novel illuminating the costs of being a woman in a dangerous, misogynistic society.«
Kirkus Reviews

»Heavy, bold but beautifully powerful, Patrícia Melo’s latest is an enraging and necessary indictment of femicide in Brazil. Based on actual events, the novel is part thriller, part social commentary and it situates this violence among the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the healing potential of feminist collaborations.«
Karla J. Strand, Ms. Magazine

»The Simple Art of Killing a Woman is a masterful novel that does not seek the reader’s tears but rather their anger.«
Liberation

»It is literature inspired by life. It is fiction constructed within the pages of a book illustrating the real events that weigh every day on the pages of newspapers and news websites. It is a woman crying out for all the others. An urgent novel that instigates and denounces.«
Jornal do Brasil

»Patrícia Melo explodes the boundaries between two worlds with energy and color. The Simple Art of Killing a Woman vibrates with rage at femicide and glows with hallucinatory images of jaguars and Amazons.«
Martina Läubli, New Journal of Zürich

»Melo’s blackest novel to date and her best, a formal and stylistic high point in her work. The protagonist finds a way out of powerlessness into a self-determined life. ‘Literature,’ says Melo, ‘is a space for resistance,’ especially in dark times. It is again more necessary than ever.«
Dagmar Kaindl, Buchkultur

»This thriller is also, more than anything, a horrifying survey of femicide in Brazil. . . . A merciless indictment that includes litanies of victims’ names, their killers’ professions, and descriptions of brutal ill treatment, The Simple Art of Killing a Woman is as dark, tough, direct, and angry as its title. There’s no room for doubt.«
Daniel Couvreur, Le Soir

»Patrícia Melo has abandoned the thriller genre, in which she has excelled for more than twenty-five years, to create a book of many facets: mingling suspense, social fiction, and a drop of mystical poetry.«
Nathalie Ricci, Nice-Matin

»Patrícia Melo has written a social thriller that is dark, brutal and intoxicating. . . . Her brand of realism, by turns raw and magical, and her fierce activist drive, leavened with humour despite the seriousness of her subject, turns these shell-shocked ‘piles of women’ into a vertiginous whirlwind from which we emerge irreversibly sobered.«
Julie Malaure, Le Point

»In this powerful and very beautiful novel, Patrícia Melo faces the violence done to women head-on. . . . In this world suspended somewhere between dream and reality, Melo condemns the state-sanctioned massacre of Brazilian women, the fate especially reserved for indigenous people and, also, the destruction of Brazil’s forests. Her urgent and sensual style makes the novel unforgettable.«
Page des Libraires

»Patrícia Melo explores the violence of evil: Patrícia Melo, a great woman of letters and undoubtedly one of the major voices of contemporary Brazilian literature, has never ceased to describe the ambivalence of Brazil, its beauty, but also its intrinsic violence… A resolutely feminist, committed and indispensable novel that is truly chilling!«
Baz‘art

»The great ecofeminist novel of the new season: the novel is definitely unsettling; but like a reverse earthquake, it builds in power throughout, playing more on sensations than emotions. A novel like a long, full-throated, unison cry, but above all a plea for a different way of looking at the Earth and humanity.«
Addict Culture

»With writing that is direct and at the same time strong and poetic, the author turns into literature the reality reported in newspaper headlines that are often hard to believe. From judicial and legislative issues to the first sign of violence that, out of fear, is silenced. The doubts, the feeling of guilt, the discoveries and, after so many male voices in her works, the profusion of different female characters.«
Roberta Pinheiro, Correio Braziliense

»This is the subject of Patrícia Melo’s great new book […]. Based on real events in Cruzeiro do Sul, the lawyer investigates cases and hears testimonies of the tragic stories of women who have been piled into oblivion and impunity […]. The most striking thing is the metamorphosis of the protagonist, rational and modern, in her experience with the old indigenous women and their ancestral myths and spells, in visions of breathtaking beauty.«
Nelson Motta, O Globo

»Melo offers the reader a novel that is difficult to digest because of the subject, but which acquires strength and beauty in the balance of language.«
Dani Langer, Revista Sepé

»Brazil has a problem with femicides. It often takes years for a court case to be initiated and a few years longer if the victim was poor, black or indigenous. Melo makes the fates of real victims visible in her latest novel. Her determination to pursue a certain style, the freedom with which she writes confidently around generic set pieces, is evident at first glance in the variable structure of her chapters. Melo puts words into a singing rhythm, arranges them in verse so that they unfold as poet.«
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

»Patrícia Melo’s novel is a powerful plea against male violence, not a diatribe but a brilliantly composed piece of literature.«
Marcus Müntefering, Der Freitag

»Engaging and well-written, the book is the first of the author with a female protagonist. In addressing a sad reality, Patrícia wanted to blend the plot with a little fable. The Simple Art of Killing a Woman is a work of fiction that brushes with real events.«
Ana Clara Brant, Jornal Estado de Minas

»Melo’s thoughtful first-person narrative and starkly powerful verse interwoven with reports of murdered women fluidly bears the weight of a gripping crime story and fearless social commentary.«
Christine Tran, Booklist

»Gog Magog is a delightful and disturbing read.«
O Globo, Rafael Montes

»Gog Magog combines a critical tone in relation to society with an agile and humorous narrative that captures the reader’s attention.«
O Estadão

»One of the greatest Brazilian authors of our time.«
RFI

»Ghost Light is a great debut adventure for detective Azucena Gobbi. It moreover proves, to the despair of certain academics, that crime novels can, first and foremost, be good literature.«
O Estado de S. Paulo

»An excellent and atypical book, a fantastic adventure.«
Le Huffington Post

»An explosive mixture of dread, greed and corruption. You won’t put it down until you’ve read the very last page.«
Cosmopolitan Brazil

»A literary highlight, world class literature.«
Jury of the German Crime Award 2014