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The Furies by Elizabeth Flock
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The Furies

Three Women and Their Violent Fight for Justice
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Narrator Mia Hutchinson Shaw

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Length 12 hours 5 minutes
Language English
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Brought to you by Penguin.

A stunning narrative investigation into three women who rewrote stories of disempowerment into stories of resistance, and wielded violence to fight back against their oppressors


Brittany Smith, a young woman from Stevenson, Alabama, killed a man she said raped her in her own home, but was denied the protection of a self-defense argument. Angoori Dahariya led a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, that was dedicated to avenging victims of domestic abuse. And Cicek Mustafa Zibo fought in a thousands-strong all-female militia that battled ISIS in Syria. Each woman has been criticised for their actions by those who believe that violence is never the answer; yet each has transmuted a story of pain into power.

In The Furies, award-winning journalist Elizabeth Flock examines the lives of three unforgettable women who chose to use lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them - government, police, courts - utterly failed to do so. In luminous prose, Flock asks searching questions about cultures in which violence seems like the only means of survival, where deeply ingrained ideas about masculinity and women have helped breed the violence that women face. Can women's acts of vengeance help to create lasting change in misogynistic and paternalistic systems, or will they ultimately hurt their cause? The novelistic accounts of these three women offer profound insights into the quest for understanding what a society in which women have real power might look like.

ยฉ2024 Elizabeth Flock (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Elizabeth Flock is a journalist and the author of Love and Marriage in Mumbai. Her journalism has appeared in the New Yorker, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, and on the PBS NewsHour, where her investigation into sexual harassment and retaliation in the U.S. Forest Service won an Emmy Award and was nominated for a Peabody Award. A PEN America fellow and IWMF and Pulitzer Center grantee, she lives in Chicago, Illinois.

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Reviews

Particularly incisive is Flockโ€™s assessment of the ways so-called justice systems pathologize and punish women . . . Flockโ€™s masterstroke [is the] immediacy and occasionally unnerving potency of her mythmaking . . . [The Furies] feels hopeful, even rebellious These stories of women's vengeance are both harrowing and thrilling. Rosa Parks' defiance was a carefully planned political act; these begin as the opposite - sheer rage. This gripping, inflaming book, itself an act of fury, shows how revenge can transmute into politics or be crushed by it The Furies is a remarkable and important exploration - reported with deep rigour and care - of what justice looks like for women who have been stripped of power and are trying to reclaim it The Furies is a glorious excavation of women's rage. But it is also a cautionary tale of how the world treats women who dare to fight back, to assert their rights, to scream into the dark void of endless discrimination and inequality. These three women will fill you with hope, despair, and yes, fury Women around the world are fighting back against their oppressors, and these powerful stories - conveyed with rigour and compassion - will leave readers fired up, furious and raring to join the cause Flock has written an important and deeply moving book . . . She is a dogged investigative reporter Engrossing . . . the vividness and directness of The Furies is distinctly filmic . . . a powerful and determinedly unsentimental book that exposes engrained injustice against women on three continents Drawing on in-depth interviews over many years, Emmy Award-winning journalist Elizabeth Flock creates vivid profiles of three women who responded to abuse with violence and vengeance.โ€ฆ. Stirring narratives of defiance Sensitively reported . . . There is a deep compassion in Flock's account This is an arresting, deeply reported new book, which considers three case studies of women . . . who, when faced with institutional failures of various kinds, took matters into their own hands . . . Flock is a patient reporter who embeds with her subjects long enough to write about their inner worlds with authority and nuance Flock brings rigor and granularity to her reporting . . . the juxtapositions in The Furies provoke thought. We tend to see violent women as deviants, but as Flock recounts the stories of Smith, Dahariya and Zibo, their longings and indulgences, their fears, motivations and faults, she shows how mistaken this notion is. The violence in her book is committed by women who are in many ways perfectly ordinary . . . Flock has done a service by portraying her subjectsโ€™ human complexity Flock has a novelistโ€™s knack for creating suspense, her reporting is thorough, and her prose is moving . . . This one will stick with readers Flock brings the gripping stories of Brittany Smith, Angoori Dahariya, and Cicek Mustafa Zibo to life with vivid detail and in-depth research . . . Her compelling narrative will resonate with those who seek to live in a more feminist, egalitarian society The Furies delicately unpicks the lives of these three flawed, brave women in an engaging as well as thoughtful way . . . Elizabeth Flockโ€™s respect for her own story, as well as the stories told by Smith, Dahariya and Zibo, are testimony to her acceptance of the complexity of all our lives Expand reviews
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