Zero-sum : stories

Call Number

  • FICTION OATE (CEN)

Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2023.

Physical Description

251 pages : 25 cm

Summary

"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 man returns from the dead to haunt his grieving wife; a young mother finds herself captivated by her own motherhood. In the collection's longest story, a much-praised 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 Oates's standing as a literary treasure and an artist of the mysterious interior life"--

Notes

"This is a Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso.

Contents

  • Zero-sum
  • Mr. Stickum
  • Lovesick
  • Sparrow
  • The Cold
  • Take me, I am free
  • The Suicide
  • The Baby-monitor
  • Monstersister
  • A Theory pre-post-mortem
  • This is not a drill
  • M A R T H E : a referendum.