A marriage gone horribly wrong; a secret female friendship and affair; a murder plot. This precursor to the true crime genre is told by Alfred D blin, one of the giants of 20th century German literature and author of Berlin Alexanderplatz, which was named a Guardian Top 100 Books of All Time.

What would it take for a woman to poison her husband? Young couple Elli and Link have been married for a year when Elli meets Gretchen, and the two soon become friends. When Elli confides in her friend about the abuse she suffers at her husband's hands, they hatch a plan for Elli to escape. But when their efforts prove unsuccessful, the pair begin to discuss a more permanent solution to Elli's problem- poison.

Based on a famous murder trial which took place in Berlin in 1923, this short novel by the master of German modernism, Alfred D blin, explores questions of moral culpability and societal expectations which remain as relevant today as in the 1920s.