{"product_id":"9780008609771-secondhand-zero-sum","title":"Zero-Sum","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","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49079231611099,"sku":"9780008609771-SECONDHAND","price":12.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/b75798c0-25c0-418c-be64-e7c12a92a8ed.jpg?v=1786117429","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9780008609771-secondhand-zero-sum","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}