The Lottery and Other Stories

A hunting and powerful collection of stories from one of America's finest writers, with a new Introduction by Patrick McGrath.
Eerie, unforgettable, and by turns terrifying and hilarious, Shirley Jackson's collection of stories plunges us into a unique, brilliantly etched world where the uncanny lurks in the everyday and where nothing is quite what it seems. In "The Lottery," Jackson's most famous work and one of the greatest – and scariest – stories of the twentieth century, a small town gathers for an annual ritual that culminates in a terrible event. In "The Daemon Lover," a woman waits, then searches, for the man she is to marry that day, only to find that he has disappeared as completely as if he had never existed. In "Trial by Combat," a shy woman confronts her kleptomaniac neighbor, and in "Pillar of Salt," a tourist in New York is gradually paralyzed by a city grown nightmarish. Throughout these twenty-five tales, we move through a variety of emotional landscapes full of loneliness and humor, oddity and cruelty, banality and terror, and searing psychological insight. No reader will come away unaffected.
The only collection to appear during Jackson's lifetime, The Lottery and Other Stories reveals the full breadth and power of the truly original writer.

Innehåller:
The Intoxicated (1949)
The Daemon lover (1949)
Like Mother Used to Make (1949)
Trial by Combat (1944)
The Villager (1944)
My Life with R. H. Macy (1941)
The Witch (1949)
The Renegade (1949)
After You, My Dear Alphonse (1943)
Charles (1948)
Afternoon in Linen (1943)
Flower Garden (1949)
Dorothy and My Grandmother and the Sailors (1949)
Colloquy (1944)
Elizabeth (1949)
A Fine Old Firm (1944)
The Dummy (1949)
Seven Types of Ambiguity (1943)
Come Dance with Me in Ireland (1943)
Of Course (1949)
Pillar of Salt (1948)
Men with Their Big Shoes (1947)
The Tooth (1949)
Got a Letter from Jimmy (1949)
The Lottery (1948)

Utdrag ur boken:
”They do say,” Mr. Adams said to Old Man Warner, who stood next to him, “that over in the north village they’re talking of giving up the lottery.”
Old Man Warner snorted. “Pack of crazy fools,” he said. “Listening to the young folks, nothing’s good enough for them. Next thing you know, they’ll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about ‘Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.’ First thing you know, we’d all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There’s always been a lottery,” he added petulantly. “Bad enough to see young Joe Summers up there joking with everybody.”
“Some places have already quit lotteries,” Mrs. Adams said.
“Nothing but trouble in that,” Old Man Warner said stoutly. “Pack of young fools.”

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