Karate Chop, Dorthe Nors's acclaimed story collection, is the debut book in the collaboration between Graywolf Press and A Public Space. These fifteen compact stories are meticulously observed glimpses of everyday life that expose the ominous lurking under the ordinary. While his wife sleeps, a husband prowls the Internet, obsessed with female serial killers; a bureaucrat tries to reinvent himself, exposing goodness as artifice when he converts to Buddhism in search of power; a woman sits on the edge of the bed where her lover lies, attempting to locate a motive for his violence within her own self-doubt. Shifting between moments of violence (real and imagined) and mundane contemporary life, these stories encompass the complexity of human emotions, our capacity for cruelty as well as compassion. Not so much minimalist as stealthy, Karate Chop delivers its blows with an understatement that shows a master at work.

多尔特•诺尔斯（Dorthe Nors, 1970— ）

丹麦女作家，当代丹麦语文学写作的代表人物。出生于日德兰半岛，毕业于奥胡斯大学文学与艺术史专业。在成为职业作家之前，多年从事翻译工作，译介了大量瑞典悬疑作品。现已出版五部长篇小说和两部短篇集。是第一位作品刊登在《纽约客》上的丹麦作家。2017年凭借《索尼娅的驾驶课》入围国际布克奖决选。诺尔斯的作品以用词精确，深谙人性，善于捕捉稍纵即逝的细腻感触，用克制的黑色幽默还原都市人的复杂内心而著称。