“Are you there, Satan? It’s me, Madison,” declares the whip-tongued thirteen-year-old narrator of Damned , Chuck Palahniuk’s subversive new work of fiction. The daughter of a narcissistic film star and a billionaire, Madison is abandoned at her Swiss boarding school over Christmas, while her parents are off touting their new projects and adopting more orphans. She dies over the holiday of a marijuana overdose—and the next thing she knows, she’s in Hell. Madison shares her cell with a motley crew of young sinners that is almost too good to be true: a cheerleader, a jock, a nerd, and a punk rocker, united by fate to form the six-feet-under version of everyone’s favorite detention movie. Madison and her pals trek across the Dandruff Desert and climb the treacherous Mountain of Toenail Clippings to confront Satan in his citadel. All the popcorn balls and wax lips that serve as the currency of Hell won’t buy them off.

This is the afterlife as only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine it: a twisted inferno where The English Patient plays on endless repeat, roaming demons devour sinners limb by limb, and the damned interrupt your dinner from their sweltering call center to hard-sell you Hell. He makes eternal torment, well, simply divine.

恰剋•帕拉尼剋，1962年齣生於美國，畢業於俄勒岡大學新聞學院，三十多歲時開始寫作，是一名特立獨行的當代小說天纔，在全世界範圍內擁有大量忠實的粉絲。主要作品有《腸子》、《隱形怪物》、《搏擊俱樂部》、《窒息》、《搖籃麯》、《日記》、《逃亡者與難民》等。這些作品糅閤瞭諷刺、戲劇性、恐怖等元素，呈現齣一種獨特的超現實主義黑色幽默。其中，《搏擊俱樂部》被導演大衛•芬奇改編成同名電影，他也因此得到瞭來自全世界的關注和認可。