The Women Are Not Fine : The Dark History of a Poisonous Sisterhood

What drives women to kill when pushed to the very edges of survival?

Join us in conversation with Hope Reese, author of Women are Not Fine, and Sian Norris.

At the turn of the 20th century, in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary, midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas was more than a caretaker - she was a confidante. She helped poor women give birth; she assisted them with abortions; and she listened. Their stories were the same: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable.

Her solution was arsenic.

Soon, women began slipping this concoction, made by dissolving flypaper in water, into their husbands' porridge, stews, and brandy. And over the next twenty years, the quiet village became the epicenter of one of the deadliest poisoning epidemics of the 20th century – according to some estimates, up to 300 people in the region would be murdered.

In the truly remarkable, The Women Are Not Fine, journalist Hope Reese pieces together archival newspapers, court documents, police records, and the vital work of historians, sociologists, and psychologists, diving deep into the truth behind this extraordinary event. Her findings serve as a stark warning: when women in a community are pushed to the brink, the consequences reverberate through history.

This is, more than anything, a timely book of ideas about what happens when women in a community are suffering.

Sian Norris

Sian Norris is an investigative journalist and writer, currently employed as senior investigations reporter at openDemocracy. She has reported from the UK, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Kenya and Bangladesh for the Observer, i news, the Times, the Guardian, the Lead, the Ferret and others. Her book, Bodies Under Siege: how the far right attack on reproductive rights went global, was published by Verso in 2023.