
Zero-Sum
Stories
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Narrator: Olivia Rose Barresi, Amy Jensen, Max Meyers, Linda Jones, Karissa Vacker, Cassandra Campbell, Robert Fass
Unabridged: 9 hr 45 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Random House Audio
Published: 07/18/2023
Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Family Life, Short Stories
Synopsis
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.
Cover image: Zeno's Arrow. 1964 by René Magritte © 2022 C. Herscovici / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Banque d'Images, ADAGP / Art Resource, NY

