Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published in USA
Jan 2013
176 pages
Genre: Short Stories/Essays
Publication Information
An aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon is approached by a cabaret singer, whose beautiful appearance belies the grotesque condition of her heart. And while the surgeon's jealous lover vows to kill him, a violent envy also stirs in the soul of a lonely craftsman. 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 to instruments of human torture. Murderers and mourners, mothers and children, lovers and innocent bystanders - their fates converge in an ominous and darkly beautiful web.
Yoko Ogawa's Revenge is a master class in the macabre that will haunt you to the last page.
Click to the right or left of the sample to turn the page.
(If no book jacket appears in a few seconds, then we don't have an excerpt of this book or your browser is unable to display it)
"The thrills are sometimes cheap and the connections between stories membrane thin, but Ogawa makes it count with her precision and dedication to bringing the vision full-circle." - Publishers Weekly
"[A]lthough the stories may be perceived as gruesome, the author paints each tale exquisitely. Well-written. " - Kirkus
"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
"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
"Involves murder, desire, jealousy, love, and torture...Creepy but compelling experimental horror that stays with you long past the book's last page." - The Atlantic Wire
The information about Revenge shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.
Yoko Ogawa is the author of The Diving Pool, The Housekeeper and the Professor, and Hotel Iris. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, and Zoetrope. Since 1988 she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, and has won every major Japanese literary award. Her novel The Housekeeper and the Professor has been adapted into a film, The Professor's Beloved Equation. She lives in Ashiya, Japan, with her husband and son.
Name Pronunciation
Yoko Ogawa: o-GAR-wa
Beirut Hellfire Society
by Rawi Hage
A searing and visionary novel set in 1970s Beirut that asks what it means to live through war.
Reader Reviews
"An American epic in the truest sense…"
—Entertainment Weekly
New from Clare Clark!
"Evocative prose and excellent pacing make this fine historical a must-read for art history buffs."
- Publishers Weekly
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info, and giveaways by email.
