Zero-Sum
Fourth Estate
'Oates's imagination is as unique, dystopian and vivid as Lewis Carroll's' ROSE TREMAIN 'A master storyteller' THE TIMES 'Electric' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America's most acclaimed writers. A brilliant young philosophy student bent on seducing her famous philosopher-mentor finds herself outmaneuvered, diabolically clever high school girls wreak a particularly apt sort of vengeance on sexual predators in their community, a woman stalked by a would-be killer may be confiding in the wrong former lover, a young woman is morbidly obsessed by her unfamiliar new role as mother. In the collection's longest story, a much-praised cutting-edge writer cruelly experiments with drafts of his own suicide. In these powerfully wrought stories that hold a mirror up to our time, Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism, and ever-shifting identities. Provocative and stunning,...
