What's the darkest, most disturbing book you've ever read?

What's the darkest, most disturbing book you've ever read?

I'm looking for a book that'll make me grateful to be alive.

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Thanks for the quick response

I see what you did there.

prob green eggs and ham
like
green eggs? wtf!

My diary desu

The Kindly Ones
The Wasp Factory
The 120 Days of Sodom
these were all books that had a significant visceral impact on me, although bearing in mind these were spattered throughout my life so what horrified me at 13 (The Wasp Factory) is probably more tame now.

Not the most disturbing I've read but I recommend 'Nip de buds, shoot the kids' by Kenzaburo Oe.

Wasp Factory was pretty fucked

I keep on recommending this. autobiographical account of the head of the UNO forces during the Rwandan genocide, lots of graphic detail and lots of senseless violence

Plus, look at that glorious ass-chin, anyone with a chin like that becomes at least Lt. Gen.

My boi

death on the installment plan

How good is The Kindly Ones? I ordered some days ago just based on its supposed edginess.

I've heard Blood Meridian is really fucked up, never read it though.
Turn Of The Screw is pretty dark if you look at the subtext and implications but it doesn't read in that menacing of a manner, so I don't think it really counts.

I don't get how people think this is a bad thing. If a woman asks a question and there's only guys around to ask, surely men will explain things to her? I expect the same to be the case if I have a question and a woman explains an answer to me.

When did it get to be such a bad thing to have something explained to you by the opposite gender?

Blood Meridian has devastating violence and implications of rape, but I wouldn't read it solely for that or you'd be disappointed. It's a great book but not necessarily if you just want shock value.

I bet its men being enthusiastic about being asked a question by a woman,and in their enthusiasm coming off as thinking she is an idiot.

Naked Lunch. That book was fucked.

The title essay's about the assumption that men always know better than women, despite also being experts and professionals. She's not literally upset about men explaining things.

OK, fair enough, I can get how that'd be patronising really. My mistake for taking the title too literally. Thanks anons.

Well I doubt the OP wants to read a book just for shock value... Or that any intelligent person would...

Eeeeh it was weird and definitely disturbing for a novel in the 1950s but was it really all that shocking read in this day and age? And this is coming from a big Burroughs fan, I was super into him in middle and high school. I like that book very much but idk it's not really disturbing to me at least except in a few spots where its grotesque in a bodily sense.