ZeroSum, Joyce Carol Oates
ZeroSum, Joyce Carol Oates
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
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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

Published: 07/18/2023


Synopsis

Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in these arresting stories by one of America’s most acclaimed writers, the award-winning, best-selling author of Blonde

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

About The Author

JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize for Lifetime Achievement, and has been nominated several times for the Pulitzer Prize. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national best sellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde; and the New York Times best seller The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. In 2020 she was awarded the Cino Del Duca World Prize for Literature. She is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Distinguished Professor of the Humanities emerita at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Kasa on April 27, 2023

This compilation of stories from other sources showcases Joyce Carol Oates's wide range, amazing. I must admit to enjoying more her grounded stories, those about new mothers suffering from postpartum depression (amazing considering she's never had children how she nailed that), or star struck studen......more

Goodreads review by Dimitris on January 15, 2024

RATING: 4,5/5 stars.......more

Goodreads review by Jill on July 14, 2023

When Joyce Carol Oates – definitely one of the most prolific writers around – is good, she is very, very good. Not every story in her new collection works, but the ones that do are stunners. The opening story – from which the title is derived – presents a young and worshipful philosophy student, K.,......more

Goodreads review by Larry on December 13, 2024

Joyce Carol Oates has been one of my favorite authors for quite a long time. This book of short stories was published in 2023 and all of the stories were previously published in a variety of publications. They showcase the macabre and sometimes illuminating viewpoint of this author about a variety o......more

Goodreads review by Cody | CodysBookshelf on July 15, 2023

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC! It’s always a pleasure reading a new Joyce Carol Oates release….. At this point I basically know what I’m getting when I start a new JCO collection. Not that her writing is ever predictable—she catches me off guard more than any other author, which......more


Quotes

“Electric . . . A vein of feminist horror runs through Zero-Sum . . . [Zero-Sum’s] zero-sum games [advance] to an existential battle between humanity and the destructive forces it has unleashed.”
—Kate Folk, The New York Times Book Review

“A bewitching collection of speculative stories about women dealing with society and violence . . . [The stories in Zero-Sum contain] quintessential Oates intrigue and mystery.”
—Sophia June, Nylon

“An electric story collection from a lit icon . . .  Violence simmers and sometimes boils over.”
—Keziah Weir, Vanity Fair

“Powerfully wrought . . . Zero-sum games are played for lethal stakes in this collection of arresting stories by one of America’s most acclaimed writer . . . Joyce Carol Oates has created a world of erotic obsession, thwarted idealism and ever-shifting identities.”
—Heather Steele, SheerLuxe


“Dark, powerful new tales by the masterful literary icon.”
AARP The Magazine


“Captivating . . . Humanity in all its devilishness is on vibrant display in these short and potent flashes of life in bleak corners. Readers will be spellbound.”
Publishers Weekly, starred