I Ate His Heart

“I ate his heart,” were the first words said to author and psychologist Nathalie von Zelowitz during an interview with a man convicted of killing and cannibalizing another man.

Between 2011 and 2021, French prison psychologist Nathalie von Zelowitz met regularly with a man who had been sentenced to a high-security psychiatric facility for a homicide and an act of cannibalism. Unlike most defendants in such cases, the man was found mentally sound and legally responsible for his actions and received a criminal sentence.

I Ate His Heart is a true crime confessional like no other—a darkly philosophical interrogation into the meaning of love, desire, and annihilation. This is not a Hannibal Lecter thriller.

Von Zelowitz’s work explores the internal logic of the crime from the perpetrator’s perspective. Using firsthand interviews, reconstructed dialogue, and excerpts from the subject’s writing, she presents a detailed account of the psychological, philosophical, and emotional framework that led to the killing. She neither sensationalizes nor excuses. Instead, she allows the subject’s words and justifications to speak for themselves, offering readers a rare view into a case that defied common explanations of psychosis or insanity.

Originally published in France to critical acclaim, I Ate His Heart arrives in English for the first time—a chilling, cerebral, and elegantly disturbing book that questions whether understanding evil can ever leave you unchanged. Includes a short foreword by cultural historian Jack Sargeant (Deathtripping, 1995).

Driven by her passion for cinema and crime novels, Nathalie von Zelowitz began studying psychology in the late 1980s, intrigued by topics that were considered marginal at the time: serial killers, sex offenders, sexual perversion, and more. While interning at the Fleury Mrogis Prison in France, she had the opportunity to participate in a national research project on sex offenders after the murder of two young girls by Christian Van Geloven. Virtually nothing had been published on the subject in France prior to Von Zelowitz’s work. She wrote her master’s thesis on rape and her second master’s thesis on pedophilia.

Translated by Jon von Zelowitz.