Author: Sarah Krasnostein

The Trauma Cleaner is a biography of Sandra Pankhurst, who ran a business cleaning the homes of people who had died alone or been living in extremity, and whose own life ran through being given away as a child, a marriage, drag, sex work and transition, told by someone who kept very little of it in order. Krasnostein holds a doctorate in criminal law and writes with a lawyer's attention to what can be established and what cannot, which matters here because Pankhurst's memory was unreliable and the book says so instead of smoothing it. It took the Victorian Prize for Literature in 2018.