Helen Zahavi

Helen Zahavi is a British novelist who worked as a Russian-English translator before becoming a writer.

Her first novel, Dirty Weekend (1991), is about a young woman who is tormented by a predatory neighbour until she finally has enough. So with a smile on her lips and a gun in her hand she goes out in the night and kills seven perverts in two days.

The book caused a media storm on publication and critical reaction was extreme and polarised. A half-page article in The Sunday Times questioning the book's morality and the author's sanity set the tone for much of the press comment that followed. The novel was attacked by Salman Rushdie, defended by Naomi Wolf, and analysed at length in both the broadsheet and popular press.

Despite - or perhaps because of - the controversy, the book went on to become an international bestseller and has been translated into thirteen languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Czech and Korean. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and adapted into a film by Michael Winner, the director of Death Wish. Helen Zahavi has a screen credit as co-writer.

She has written two further novels, True Romance (1994) and Donna And The Fatman (1998), both of which have been widely reviewed and translated.