Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales

＂Each tale here seems to be its own torture chamber--dark and meticulous . . . More disturbing than the bloody imagery is the eerie calm with which each plot unfolds, as if one act of violence must necessarily transform into the portal for another.＂ --The New Yorker

A collection of eleven eerie and harrowing interwoven tales from the award-winning author of Mina’s Matchbox and The Memory Police--now with a new introduction by Carmen Maria Machado.

An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. A bereft and grieving mother attempts to connect with her dead son. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon’s jealous lover vows to kill him. Desire meets with impulse and erupts, attracting the attention of the surgeon’s neighbor--who is drawn to a decaying residence that is now home only to instruments of human torture. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and enemies--their fates converge in an ominous and darkly beautiful web.

Sinister forces collide with a host of desperate characters in this deeply harrowing collection of interwoven tales from Yoko Ogawa, a master of the macabre. Eerie, suspenseful, and wonderfully unsettling, Revenge will haunt you until the very last page.

Yoko Ogawa’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Harper’s Magazine. Since 1988, she has produced more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, which have been published in several countries. Her novel Hotel Iris was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010.

Stephen Snyder teaches Japanese literature at Middlebury College. His translations include works by Kzaburo Oe, Ryu Murakami, Natsuo Kirino, and Miri Yu.