Jesse Ball

A startling, subversive novel from award-winning author Jesse Ball. An unsettling exploration of inequality and the devastating effect of unmitigated power. From the inimitable mind of award-winning author Jesse Ball, a novel about an unsettlingly familiar society that has renounced the concept of equality—and the devastating consequences of unmitigated power. The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It...

A man and a woman have moved into a small house in a small village. The woman is an examiner, the man, her claimant. The examiner is both doctor and guide, charged with teaching the claimant a series of simple functions. She makes notes in her journal about his progress: he is showing improvement, yet his dreams are troubling. One...

An unusual and haunting love story from the acclaimed author of Samedi the Deafness. A VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES ORIGINAL. With his debut novel, Samedi the Deafness, Jesse Ball emerged as one of our most extraordinary new writers. Now, Ball returns with this haunting tale of love and storytelling, hope and identity. When Selah Morse sees a young woman get hit by...

Over the course of several months, eight people vanish from their homes in the same Japanese town, and a single playing card is left on each of their doors. Known as the 'Narito Disappearances', the crime has the authorities baffled—until a confession is delivered to the police, signed by Oda Sotatsu, a thread salesman. Our narrator, a journalist named Jesse...

When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a son with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up...