Zero-Sum

Oatess imagination is as unique, dystopian and vivid as Lewis Carrolls 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 Americas 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 collections 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, Zero-Sum reinforces Oatess standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life. Alluringly dark and spiky NEW STATESMAN Zero-Sum is brilliant bloodied, breathless, weird A. K. BLAKEMORE Dark, unsettling stories Theres a disquieting violence simmering a shrill alarm of disquiet DAILY MAIL Oates is an inspired writer, and a formidable psychologist INDEPENDENT