First published in 2007, The red parts It is the chronicle of the trial of a case reopened thirty-five years after it remained unsolved: the murder of the author's aunt, something that, without having directly affected her when it happened, because she had not even been born yet, had always hovered like a ghost over the family, who could not find peace knowing that the murder of March 1969 was still at large. But Maggie Nelson is an author who is both too powerful and too subtle. to write only A legal chronicle: the book delves into intimate details of her childhood and youth, marked by other losses, pain, and a growing sense of bewilderment, and also rises into theory by proposing a series of highly pertinent reflections on the reasons for the collective obsession with the violent deaths of women. These three paths—chronicle, autobiography, and essay—intersect here and there, seemingly without order, on every page of the book, organically, as only a highly skilled hand knows how to orchestrate. And indeed, the author ofThe Argonauts, the book that would catapult her to fame a few years later —or, at least, as one of the icons of a new way of writing autobiographical essays— she was already successfully demonstrating here how to move elegantly and radically from literary theory to a small white box containing the remains of her deceased father's bones. This audacity comes naturally to her, and she masters literary tools with ease. If, in addition, the translation is impetuous and playful, as is the case here, the text becomes as captivating as the original.