Showing results by author "Ottessa Moshfegh" in All Categories

There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities.

Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, believes his mother died giving birth to him. One of Marek’s few consola­tions is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby. For some people, Ina’s ability to receive trans­missions of sacred knowledge from the natural world is a godsend. For others, Ina’s home in the woods is a godless place.

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman, trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's carer and her day job as a secretary at the prison. When the charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship.

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate; she works an easy job at a hip art gallery and lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one. Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate.

The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys' prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city.

After the publication of her short story “The Lottery” in the New Yorker in 1948 received an unprecedented amount of attention, Shirley Jackson was quickly established as a master horror storyteller. This collection of classic and newly reprinted stories provides listeners with more of her unsettling, dark tales, including the “The Possibility of Evil” and “The Summer People”.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation - he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety.

En la aldea medieval de Lapvona, el pequeño Marek vive en la más absoluta pobreza con su padre Jude, viudo, devoto y agresivo. Cojo, con la cara deforme y una concepción distorsionada de la realidad, Marek solo halla consuelo en su temor de Dios y en sus visitas a Ina, una anciana con saberes ocultos que vive alejada del mundo. Cuando una muerte violenta lo sitúa en el epicentro de la vida palaciega, Marek pasa a convertirse en un auténtico aristócrata dentro de la corte del corrupto y ensimismado señor feudal que gobierna Lapvona.

When Dinah Brooke's second novel, Lord Jim at Home, was first published in 1973, it was described as "squalid and startling," "nastily horrific," and a "monstrous parody" of upper-middle class English life. It is the story of Giles Trenchard, who grows up isolated in an atmosphere of privilege and hidden violence; who goes to war, and returns; and then, one day—like the hero of Joseph Conrad's classic Lord Jim—commits an act that calls his past, his character, his whole world into question.

Nostalgia de otro mundo reúne sus mejores relatos, ganadores de los premios Pushcart, O. Henry o Plimpton Discovery Prize, con los que ha entrado a formar parte del universo literario de Flannery O’Connor o Angela Carter.

En Mi año de descanso y relajación, Ottessa Moshfegh hace de Manhattan el epicentro de una civilización, la del año 2000, dominada por la apatía. Como una oscura bella durmiente, la narradora de esta novela decide encerrarse durante un año en su piso de una de las zonas más exclusivas de Nueva York, asistida por una herencia ingente y por una gran cantidad de fármacos, para dedicarse a dormir y ver películas de Whoopi Goldberg y Harrison Ford.

Eine Kriminalgeschichte der anderen Art: spannend, beängstigend, bewegend. Bei Sonnenaufgang läuft Vesta mit ihrem Hund eine Runde durch den Wald - die tägliche Routine einer einsamen alten Frau -, als sie einen Zettel findet: "Ihr Name war Magda. Niemand wird je erfahren, wer sie getötet hat. Hier ist ihre Leiche." Obwohl von der Leiche jede Spur fehlt, lässt Vesta der Gedanke an einen Mord nicht mehr los. Wer war Magda? Und wer könnte ihr Mörder sein? Die Aufklärung dieser Fragen wird zu Vestas Mission.

Hun har alt. Hun er ung, flot, slank, hun er nyuddannet fra Columbia, lever af en stor arv og har en lejlighed på Manhattan. I New York år 2000 er den moderne verden på sit absolut højeste, alt er tilgængeligt, og døgnets timer skal udnyttes maksimalt. At sove, i stedet for at arbejde eller nyde, betragtes som en svaghed. Men samtidig udskrives sovepiller, som var det slik. Hun beslutter - efter at være blevet fyret for sine time-lange lure på arbejdet - at sove i et år. Måske er en kemisk dvaletilstand den eneste vej ud af en speedet samtid?

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue, marinero rudo, tramposo y canalla, nos habla desde la bodega mugrienta del barco en la que está retenido, en un estado de embriaguez intermitente que vuelve la realidad ambigua. Divaga entre recuerdos borrosos y teje una fina línea entre la niebla del alcohol y las trampas de la memoria. Es posible que haya matado a un hombre, y que ese hombre fuera su mejor amigo. Ahora, solo quiere un trago para acallar las aterradoras sombras que acompañan a su indeseada sobriedad.

Es riecht nach Kot und Verwesung, nach Blut, Vieh und Schlamm–das ist Lapvona, der gottverlassenste Ort der Romanwelt. Hier ist niemand vom Glück begünstigt, am wenigsten Marek, der missgestaltete Sohn des Schafhirten. Doch sein Elend birgt auch eine große Kraft: baldige Nähe zu Gott durch Entsagung und Erniedrigung.