{"product_id":"9780803237476","title":"Cruel Tales from the Thirteenth Floor","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn sixteen ferocious short stories French author Luc Lang encapsulates the brutality of everyday life. Each tale is an admixture of tragedy, comedy, ridicule, and pain. Compassion lurks somewhere, perhaps, but pity is conspicuous by its absence.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLang’s curt, agitated prose disassembles daily life with a swift, unflinching hand and examines it with a sharp, analytic eye. Skinning quotidian moments to bare, raw impulses, confusions, and the agonies underneath, the stories in \u003ci\u003eCruel Tales from the Thirteenth Floor \u003c\/i\u003eshow the mundane grind of the everyday forces that are fueled by cruel calculation and amoral happenstance and shot through with bizarre surprise. The results are at once coldly comic and powerfully tragic.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eInterpreting human interactions as a series of precise jabs and desperate flailings, \u003ci\u003eCruel Tales from the Thirteenth Floor\u003c\/i\u003e tells truths about the darker sides of our potential and our well-meaning urges dimmed by chance.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Nebraska","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47021104103664,"sku":"9780803237476","price":17.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780803237476_p0.jpg?v=1763727459","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780803237476","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}