“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. “A secret garden of dark, glorious flowers: silky, heartbreakingly beautiful...and poison to their roots.” ―Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns “Yoko Ogawa is an absolute master of the Gothic at its most beautiful and dangerous, and Revenge is a collection that deepens and darkens with every story you read.” ―Peter Straub “It's not just Murakami but also the shadow of Borges that hovers over this mesmerizing book… [and] one may detect a slight bow to the American macabre of E.A. Poe. Ogawa stands on the shoulders of giants, as another saying goes. But this collection may linger in your mind -- it does in mine -- as a delicious, perplexing, absorbing and somehow singular experience.” ―Alan Cheuse, NPR “Spine-tingling… These are shiningly sinister stories that grab you by the vulnerable back of the neck and don't let go.” ― Elle “Fittingly, each tale 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 “Magnificently macabre… Ogawa is the Japanese master of dread… These tales are not for the faint of heart, but Ms. Ogawa is more "Masque of the Red Death" than she is The Ring . She elevates herself above any limitations of the genre she's working in.” ― The New York Observer “Equally seductive and unsettling, these tales overwhelm the reader with sinister dreamscapes, each exquisitely rendered in cool, precise prose that has been rightfully compared to that of fellow Japanese author Haruki Murakami…her tales will long linger in the mind.” ― San Francisco Chronicle “[ Revenge ] Erupts into the ordinary world as if from the unconscious or the grave…. A haunting introduction to her work… the overall effect is [that of] David Lynch: the rot that lurks beneath the surface.” ― The Economist “If creepy were a place, Ms. Ogawa has come up with many ways to get there… Even while punctuated [by] macabre flourishes her book maintains its restraint, like a dark alley that's too quiet, or an insane person acting too calm.” ―Susannah Meadows , The New York Times “Every act of malice glows creepily against the plain background. It's a book that ought to be distributed to every fiction-M.F.A. candidate who tends to overwrite: Ogawa is an expert in doing more with less.” ― New York Magazine “[Ogawa] stresses the trustworthiness of the storyteller and the essential reality of what we are seeing, even as strange situations and surreal events create a dreamlike undertow, challenging our sense of security. The result is a profound unease that spreads out and permeates the narrative. Kafka is, of course, one of the great disseminators of this technique, and Murakami also uses it, but Ogawa makes it her own, with excellent results.” ― Los Angeles Review of Books “Reading Yoko Ogawa is akin to watching a film by David Lynch; the experience is an admixture of vertiginous revelation and dark defamiliarization… her stories seem to exist in a timeless, fluid medium all its own.” ― The Huffington Post “Eleven creeptastic stories, complete with Murakami-esque weirdness.” ― io9 “Japan's best teller of macabre tales… Ogawa is such a master that she pushes the boundaries and suspends the mystery… You never know ‘why,' only that humans are slaves to time, and we keep on with our lives so that someday we might understand.” ― The Daily Beast “A storehouse of creepy and vicious behavior… [Ogawa's] touches of horror sometimes put me in mind of the grown-up stories of Roald Dahl.” ― Jim Higgins, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Ogawa's language, in Stephen Snyder's translatio