{"product_id":"9780008609801","title":"Zero-Sum by Joyce Carol Oates","description":"`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, Zero-Sum reinforces Oates's 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 . There's a disquieting violence simmering . a shrill alarm of disquiet'             DAILY MAIL                                `Oates is an inspired writer, and a formidable psychologist'             INDEPENDENT\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56221861904757,"sku":"9780008609801","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780008609801.jpg?v=1762200858","url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/products\/9780008609801","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}