The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou by Eleni Kyriacou (Head of Zeus, £14.99) takes place in 1954 when Eva, a Cypriot Londoner who works in the cloakroom at a nightclub, is also freelancing as a translator for the police. The extra money may allow her and her husband to find a better flat. But translating for a murder suspect makes her wonder if it’s worth it. 

Zina is in London to visit her son and meet her grandchildren and her German daughter-in-law. It’s the latter she is accused of killing. The evidence is overwhelming, but Eva can’t help a growing, and perhaps dangerous, sympathy for this lonely grandmother. Zina’s lived a life of poverty; illiterate in her own language and helpless in English, she seems to be despised by everyone she encounters — police, prison officers, court staff, even her own relatives. Class and nationality are against her; only her sex might save her from the hangman. 

The facts of this novel are closed basely on a largely forgotten real-life case, while the psychology and emotions are the writer’s invention. In an afterword she tells us that, for instance, she didn’t invent the prosecution’s description of the killing as “a stupid crime by a stupid woman of the peasant sort.” Therefore, to call this a feminist novel would be like calling rain wet: what else could it possibly be?