The Dark Dark: Stories

A “wonderfully spooky” story collection exploring the strangeness that inhabits our mundane lives (The New Yorker).

Best Book of the Year: NPR, Vogue, The Huffington Post, The Chicago Review of Books, The National Post, Electric Literature, Kirkus Reviews

From the acclaimed author of Mr. Splitfoot, Samantha Hunt’s first collection of stories, The Dark Dark, blends the literary and the fantastic and brings us characters on the verge—girls turning into women, women turning into deer, people doubling or becoming ghosts, and more.

Step into The Dark Dark, where an award-winning, acclaimed novelist debuts her first collection of short stories and conjures entire universes in just a few pages—conjures, splits in half, mines for humor, destroys with absurdity, and regenerates. In prose that sparkles and haunts, Samantha Hunt playfully pushes the bounds of the expected and fills every corner with vibrant life, imagining numerous ways in which the weird might poke its way through the mundane. Each of these ten haunting, inventive tales brings us to the brink—of creation, mortality and immortality, infidelity and transformation, technological innovation and historical revision, loneliness and communion, and every kind of love.

Laced with lyricism, hope, Hunt’s characteristic sly wit, and her unflinching gaze into the ordinary horrors of human existence, The Dark Dark celebrates the mysteries and connections that swirl around us. It’s never all the same, Hunt tells us. It changes a tiny bit every time. See for yourself.

Praise for The Dark Dark

“A feminist manifesto threaded through imaginative fiction; it’s the most evocative, impressive collection I’ve read this year.” —Daniel Johnson, The Paris Review, staff pick

“Grab your comforter and a flashlight for this tour de force collection from one of our most inventive storytellers.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“If you love strange fiction—Kelly Link, Aimee Bender, Karen Joy Fowler, Karen Russell, Twin Peaks, Stranger Things—Samantha Hunt’s The Dark Dark is a must-read title.” —Chicago Review of Books

© 2024 FSG Originals (E-bog): 9780374716523

Release date

E-bog: 2. juli 2024