Iphigenia in the New York Review of Books

Dear Editors,

In “The Custom of the Capitol” (Issue 36), Nausicaa Renner writes: “I seem to remember Hannah Arendt writing of the long Eichmann trial that as time went on, fewer and fewer journalists showed up. Trying to find it later, I’m unable to locate the passage. (Was it, instead, Janet Malcolm in Iphigenia?)” Yes, it was, but not in my book Iphigenia in Forest Hills. Renner must be thinking of the three-part sequel to the book that appeared in the New York Review of Books in 2012 and chronicled the fate of Mazoltuv Borukhova’s small daughter, Michelle Malakova, after her mother was convicted and incarcerated. I wrote about the hearings in the Queens Family Courthouse where I sat in the press section, among the “tabloid reporters with whom I had become friendly at the murder trial (or ‘Dentist Slay Trial’ as one of their headline writers called it) in the winter of 2009. However, after a few months, the reporters stopped coming; the story of the ‘tragic hit kid’ or ‘murder orphan’ was no longer newsworthy, and I became the only journalist covering the hearings.”
—Janet Malcolm