It’s so creepy because you read the repeated sexual abuse of a minor through the eyes of the perpetrator who continuously justifies his acts and misrepresents Lolita’s reactions. He’s a very unreliable narrator. First he even becomes her stepdad to have better access to her. Then her mother dies, through a car accident just before she can call the police on him. Again this is recounted through Humberts eyes, so I’m thinking it was actually murder.
I haven’t finished the book yet, it’s kind of hard to read. It’s been a few years, and I should be somewhere in the middle IIRC.
Three words: Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Sybil was a worthy contender too.
1984 is honestly the most terrifying book I’ve read. I read to it see if people were invoking it in good faith (they weren’t) and left with a very real fear that there will always be a more pressing issue to distract us from any real political change, even in cases where most Americans agree with each other.
“La catedral del mar” and “Los herederos de la tierra” by Ildefonso Falcones, and one more vote for “The road”.
If anyone’s looking for something not-quite-so-fucked-up as the suggestions here -
Creepers by David Morell
He wrote the Rambo stories too . Creepers is a great story with good twists, worth a read
In the Arab world were I live there are tons of them, but maaaan…where do I start…
Which one pops to mind first, even if it’s not the most fucked up one you’ve come across? Alternatively, any of the options have a published English translation (though I imagine these’d probably be the tamer of the bunch)?
I for one am super interested.
Which one pops to mind first, even if it’s not the most fucked up one you’ve come across?
what I remember for sure, is the general theme of these books ( made me really disgusted and depressed ) which… is hatred…
alot of things that we consider wrong, you name it… are normalized… Not directly but they’re presented in a certain way, that is justifiable…like… say racism…homophobia… Murder… Etc…
- The Human Meat restaurant ( Tag: Conspiracy )
Takes place in NYC, a story about Dr. Joseph Lister who works for the Mafia under a guy named Lucky Lusiano, so this Doctor guy works inside a building that looks like any normal building, but it’s actually a secret club, for the Mafia… And other shady people…
Inside that building there’s a butchery ( or butcher shop ), where he inspects the human meat that will be served to the club members…
So one day he decides to get that story out, and he goes to the FBI…👀… He spoke to the head of the FBI who told him to act normal and go to work the next day…
The next day he walks in to that building were he saw the FBI director standing next to Lucky Luciano, and his family on their knees… I’ll let you guess what happens next
Tap for spoiler
🍖🥩🍗🍔🍟🌭🍲🍞
That’s not the only fucked up part, a lot of restaurants, famous ones like McDonald are serving human meat, and people love it because it’s actually delicious… The author claims…
From where they’re getting this meat ? Homeless people… Again according to the author…
- Black Boner ( I’m serious… 🙂 ) ( Tag: Erotic )
CW: Homophobia, Racism
Ok… I’m genuinely worried about the mental state of this author…
basically this guy wrote a novel about himself, where he turned himself into a… a gifted fucker… shall we say…
would somebody tell this guy this is not a real flex? his crush irl won’t be impressed
- Evidence Of Honey ( Tag: Erotic )
CW: dehumanizing objectification
So this author views men as sex toys, like on the first page… aside from that there’s something really interesting going on for this novel, she descibes her sexual experiences ( yuck I must tell you ), but she says she’s doing it for “research purposes”… ( lol, i know ), like she quotes verses from the Hadith ( Hadith is any book that gathers and curates all of Prophets Mohamed’s sayings and deeds, the two Major ones are Sahih Muslim & Sahih Bukhari ) and she tells us that she’s having random sex with strangers to apply the stuff Prophet Mohammed did with his wives… her reasoning is: if we’re going to take Prophet Mohammed as a roll model, we might as well … include his sex life…( she triggered a lot of Muslims because of this, but I’ll give this one another read to fact check some stuff despite how cringy it is )
published English translation
You’d be right, you guys don’t even get the real translation of the Qur’an and Hadith… just a watered down version… peaceful and cheerful…
Is it just like America where the most religious dudes watch the sickest porn?
Aside from the occasional designed-to-offend ones, probably The Road. Only book I’ve ever read that haunted me
I got offended at the lack of punctuation or anything. Didn’t get far. Fuck you Oprah and fuck your book club.
I read it and then watched the movie and it was depressing. His other book Outer Dark involves brother sister incest, child murder, and cannibalism! Very cheery.
Hm I wonder how the next scene will go. Gray ash huh? Well I guess I should have seen that coming.
Anytjing that marquis de sade wrote. Dont read it. Its the work of someone who pretended to “pose interesting questions” while write the worst rape fanfiction with his dick in his hand.
Trigger warning: just straight up awful assault
!There is a scene in which a father is forced to raped his underaged daughter and then gets shot while cumming inside her. The daughter of course gets spared. Oh wait no. She gets raped a gun point, mutilated and then rape killed again. Repeat this fof roughly 400 pages. Oh wow, so challenging and insightful! I truly believe that de Sade was horrified by this! Fuck off. !<
it is horrific - but you’re missing some of the context.
De Sade partly wrote it as a fuck-you to the establishment in and of itself
Partly as a satire of the aristocracy - and you can’t understate exactly how much he hated them - which is why he casts them as rapist pedophiles that prefer young boys
And partly as an attempt to catalog horrors of abuse and mental illness and the suffering of the common man at the hands of those in power
cw: rape
When I was 15 I found the most fucked up book in my abusive fathers nightstand. It was basically a pornography book about women in prison getting raped. That was it just an inch thick novel about prison rape.
Been no contact a long while.
That’s pretty terrible. Good luck to you.
Firefly by Piers Anthony (the writer of the Xanth fantasy series).
There’s way too much talk of erections around dead bodies, but by far the worst part is the long section with a woman describing in way too much detail how much she enjoyed being raped as a five year old, acting it out and everything. Anthony is a messed up dude.
Was just about to post this. I read it in the 90s, expecting something more along the lines of a scifi Xanth style story. Got a traumatising, f’d up sexual fever dream. To this day some of the shit from that story pops in my head sometimes.
It’s incredibly messed up. I don’t recommend it.
The Reckoning by Grisham.
Death in Her Hands by Moshfegh.
The Long Walk by King.
The Children of Hurin by Tolkien.
Angela’s Ashes by McCourt.
Already mentioned but The Road, definitely.
The Children of Hurin is one of my favourite books. It’s been a while since I read it, but I remember I loved it for the beautiful prose and just how sad (and messed up) the story is.
Didn’t read it all but only the opening when I was personally too young. Anyway the book lucky by the author of the lovely bones. I’ve read books with serious content in it like the first broken earth book and deeds of paksenaeian both which have rape/dubious consent but I was more than mature enough to handle that.
So honestly the train in IT was pretty fucked up and I probably shouldn’t have read it as young as I was. 100 years of solitude has its own fucked-up-ness and God of small things is also fucked up at the end, but all very different types of fucked up…
American Psycho contained scenes so graphic that I’d have to pause and stare out the window briefly before I could go on.
I used to sell books and this elderly couple came up to the counter saying they were buying it as a Christmas present.
So I told them “Hey, it’s not my place to say what is or is not a good Christmas present, but before I sell it to you, could I get you to just flip the pages, randomly stick your finger in, and start reading?”
They thought I was kidding, but they did it…
“OH MY GOD!”
“Yeah…”
“OH MY GOD!”
Better they find out then than AFTER I sold it to them!
That’s a pretty interesting encounter. Glad you helped them know what they were about to do.
It was more self preservation. I didn’t want them coming back after the fact. ;)
So did they buy it or what
Jesus christ ! There’s just some things you don’t talk about in public.
They did not…
Pausing is a regular thing with books for me, disturbing or no
The pause was forced was my point. I couldn’t go on otherwise because I was overwhelmed.
I entered this post to say exactly that.
There comes a point in the book when the constant one-upping the last scene just makes me need two or more sessions to get through the chapter. The last “Girls” chapters are specially gruelling.
It was the hamster that finally got me. Was sitting outside at my school’s union, between classes, and just couldn’t believe what I was reading.
Gore
For me it was the scene wher Pat like grabs the vocal cords of one of the women after drilling a hole through the mouth and then rips them out of the mouth.
At first I thought the book was really boring with all of the brands and clothes descriptions that took half of the chapters. After that the senseless killings and brutality got to me in the end.
I had the same experience, why all this stuff about brands and clothes? Then the juxtaposition totally disturbed me. Then I started working with people in the corporate world…
I thought it was like a coping mechanism to make him more adjusted. Sometimes when he doesn’t describe brands or simply there aren’t any designer products, he loses his mind very quickly.
It could also be about corporate behavior but I haven’t had the chance to meet anyone that entrenched.
It is absolutely a coping mechanism for those types in reality. Scary accurate.
Yeah first time I read a grueling book. Couldn’t believe how much worse literature gore affects me compared to onscreen blood.
As a fan of transgressive fiction, I’ve read quite a lot of fucked up books. Here’s what I came up with off the top of my head - sorry, it’s quite a long list!
Some different types of fucked up here (horrible fucked up and fun fucked up):
Cows by Matthew Stoke (not very well written, but very fucked up, a sick classic)
Anything by Carlton Mellick III, but especially Aspeshit, which is like Evil Dead on acid (semi literally). But he’s definitely ‘fun fucked up’ not grotesquely nasty without humour. All Bizarro is fucked up and worth checking out.
Apocalypse Culture I and II are both intentionally fucked up compendiums of short pieces and art that will make you sick and angry, but also make you think about a lot of different things. Feral House have plenty of fucked up books that are worth reading.
Atrocity Exhibition by JG Ballard - experimental writing unlike most other Ballard books, but significantly more fucked up in parts. All Ballard is great and fucked up at some point; High Rise has one of the best opening paragraphs of any book, ever. Crash is probably second to Atrocity Exhibition in fucked-up-ness.
Marquis de Sade - Justine, 100 Days of Sodom. Juliette: (mentioned elsewhere) horrible imagination-run-wild in the worst way, but aimed at antagonising people against the aristocracy and satirising the extreme cruelty and nastiness of those in power, probably including himself.
UK publisher Creation books (and imprint Attack!) did “anti-books” as they called them - some fucked up stuff of all kinds there: from fun stupidity like Raiders of the Low Forehead to some really horrible stuff by Peter Sotos that was unreadable (even to me).
The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices by Brenda Love tells you all you need to know about human beings and a lot you never needed to know (eyeball licking fetishism is a thing, apparently).
Nick Cave’s ‘And The Ass Saw The Angel’ is a wonderful pieces of fucked-up-ness and the reason for my username: a mute hillbilly recounts his sordid, psychotic life while drowning in quicksand, with biblical imagery and references, poetic ‘Deep South’ language, and lots of unpleasantness, especially from his parents. Kind of an ugly sibling to 'The Wasp Factory’s.
Clive Barker’s works can be pretty fucked up - Books of Blood is still his best work, in my opinion.
Supervert’s ‘Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish’ was disappointing, badly written, and fucked up in boring but nasty ways. I’d avoid it, but it’s a long time since I read it, so maybe I forgot a lot about it. I remember being bored and irritated, and little else.
Most Will Self books are pretty to very fucked up, particularly his early stuff.
Harry Crews was a wonderful writer, with some pretty fucked up stuff in Feast of Snakes and A Childhood - The Biography of a Place.
Chuck Palahniuk, Irvine Welsh, and William Burroughs all have lots of great fucked up work.
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski is fucked up in terms of layout and typesetting as well as storyline. Some really effective parts, some get a little bogged down in their own cleverness. But very much worth reading. Not fucked up in terms of gore or sex, as far as I remember!
Patrick Suskind’s Perfume is brilliant and fucked up, and possibly the only book that can change your sense of smell.
James Joyce - Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake are fucked up in terms of experimental style and language, and are wonderful pieces of writing, despite being notoriously ‘difficult’.
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s biographical books are wonderful and fucked up. ‘The Spiritual Journey’ is one of the best still.
That’s enough for now - I’m sure I’m missing a lot!
Reading Spectrum 7th grade math workbook was the first time I considered ending it all
