ZOO (Novel)

About

Ten stories of horror and science fiction from one of Japan's most inventive young writers. In one story, the last man on Earth turns out to be a robot. In another, a man builds a house that follows the blueprint of a murder. In the title story, a bereaved man photographs the same spot every day, watching his dead girlfriend's body decompose — and something in the photographs begins to change. Otsuichi writes with the economy of a filmmaker, setting up each story's premise in a few paragraphs and then following its logic to conclusions that are equal parts horrifying and inevitable. The collection is dark, strange, and mechanically precise — each story a small machine built to deliver a specific kind of shock. Ten stories, ten nightmares, each one constructed with the precision of a trap — and the compassion to make the horror hurt.