Secret Life

About the Book

This collection of 23 stories reflects a diversity of approaches to key questions about the human condition, including questions about mortality, love, obsession, and creativity. ”Balzac's War” is a harrowing, powerful far-future novella that pits brother against brother in a landscape ravaged by war with Earth's newly sentient human-made species. In 13th-century Cambodia, a lone artist is torn between his love of his craft and his unspoken love for a woman in ”The Bone Carver's Tale.” In ”The Emperor's Reply” and ”The Compass of His Bones,” set in 17th-century Peru, the last Incan Emperor, having brutally fallen at the hands of the Conquistadores, seeks his revenge.

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About the author

Jeff VanderMeer

When Jeff VanderMeer writes, the world gets stranger—but in a way that feels unsettlingly familiar. Known for blurring the boundaries between nature and the surreal, his work isn’t content to just entertain—it transforms. With Annihilation, the first book in the Southern Reach Trilogy, VanderMeer didn’t just capture…

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