{
    "id": 506088,
    "slug": "iphigenia-in-forest-hills-janet-malcolm",
    "nstc": null,
    "title": "Iphigenia in Forest Hills",
    "subtitle": null,
    "collection_title": null,
    "collection_part_number": null,
    "annotation": null,
    "description": "\n\nPrizewinning journalist Janet Malcolm discovers the elements of Greek tragedy in a sensational New York City murder trial\n\n\"Astringent and absorbing. . . . Iphigenia in Forest Hills casts, from its first pages, a genuine spell \u2014 the kind of spell to which Ms. Malcolm\u2019s admirers (and I am one) have become addicted.\"\u2014Dwight Garner, New York Times\n\n\"This is shrewd and quirky crime reporting at its irresistible and disabused best.\"\u2014Louis Begley, Wall Street Journal\n\n\"She couldn't have done it and she must have done it.\" This is the enigma at the heart of Janet Malcolm's riveting book about a murder trial in the insular Bukharan-Jewish community of Forest Hills, Queens, that captured national attention. The defendant, Mazoltuv Borukhova, a beautiful young physician, is accused of hiring an assassin to kill her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov, a respected orthodontist, in the presence of their four-year old child. The prosecutor calls it an act of vengeance: just weeks before Malakov was killed in cold blood, he was given custody of Michelle for inexplicable reasons. It is the \"Dickensian ordeal\" of Borukhova's innocent child that drives Malcolm's inquiry.\n\nWith the intellectual and emotional precision for which she is known, Malcolm looks at the trial\u2014\"a contest between competing narratives\"\u2014from every conceivable angle. It is the chasm between our ideals of justice and the human factors that influence every trial\u2014from divergent lawyering abilities to the nature of jury selection, the malleability of evidence, and the disposition of the judge\u2014that is perhaps most striking.\n\nSurely one of the most keenly observed trial books ever written, Iphigenia in Forest Hills is ultimately about character and \"reasonable doubt.\" As Jeffrey Rosen writes, it is \"as suspenseful and exciting as a detective story, with all the moral and intellectual interest of a great novel.\"\n\n\"Iphigenia in Forest Hills is another dazzling triumph from Janet Malcolm. Here, as always, Malcolm\u2019s work inspires the best kind of disquiet in a reader\u2014the obligation to think.\" \u2014Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court\n\n\"A remarkable achievement that ranks with Malcolm's greatest books. Her scrupulous reporting and interviews with protagonists on both sides of the trial make her own narrative as suspenseful and exciting as a detective story, with all the moral and intellectual interest of a great novel.\" \u2014Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America\n",
    "imprint": null,
    "language_code": "eng",
    "original_language_code": null,
    "page_count": 168,
    "duration_seconds": null,
    "publication_date_first": "2011-01-01",
    "publication_date_latest": "2011-01-01",
    "cover_url": null,
    "editions": [],
    "ratings_count": 0,
    "read_count": 0,
    "review_count": 0,
    "favorite_count": 0,
    "reading_status_read_count": 0,
    "reading_status_reading_count": 0,
    "reading_status_want_to_read_count": 0,
    "rating_average": null,
    "ratings_distribution": {
        "1": 0,
        "2": 0,
        "3": 0,
        "4": 0,
        "5": 0
    },
    "created_at": "2025-09-19T14:37:48+00:00",
    "updated_at": "2025-10-30T00:43:12+00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "id": 4192,
        "slug": "yale-university-pres",
        "name": "Yale University Pres",
        "created_at": "2025-09-19T13:08:37+00:00",
        "updated_at": "2025-09-19T15:09:57+00:00"
    },
    "contributors": [
        {
            "id": 314353,
            "slug": "janet-malcolm-2",
            "key_names": "Malcolm",
            "names_before_key": "Janet",
            "prefix_to_key": null,
            "contributor_role": "A01",
            "readable_contributor_role": "Author"
        }
    ],
    "genres": [],
    "subjects": [],
    "campaigns": []
}