Tamblyn says she first began thinking about writing a novel four years ago, long before the allegations against Harvey Weinstein brought the #MeToo movement to international attention.

The book was actually written in 2016 – again, before #MeToo went global – but during the year that Donald Trump was elected president of the US. Tamblyn was pregnant with her first child, daughter Marlow, at the time, and says that some of the book’s brutality came from “carrying a woman inside of me, in 2016, during that particular election year”.

Tamblyn had previously said that she wanted to highlight the fact that men can be the victims of sexual assault, as well as perpetrators.

“So few men come forward and report being the victims of rape,” she told the New York Post in June. “You can only imagine how many more stay silent.”

She added that she was intrigued by the idea of a truly terrible female antagonist who isn’t motivated by some trauma that she herself has experienced in her life.

“It’s very rare you find a female protagonist that is violent and volatile without reason,” she said. “I wanted to shatter that as an archetype. I wanted to create someone who did it for the reasons that people actually sexually assault other people. It’s not about sex; it’s about power.

“It’s important to remember that sexual assault knows no race, no gender, no class. It’s something that harms all of us.”

Images: Getty Images

Amber Tamblyn responds to criticism of her novel about a female rapist