“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.

恰克•帕拉尼克，1962年出生于美国，毕业于俄勒冈大学新闻学院，三十多岁时开始写作，是一名特立独行的当代小说天才，在全世界范围内拥有大量忠实的粉丝。主要作品有《肠子》、《隐形怪物》、《搏击俱乐部》、《窒息》、《摇篮曲》、《日记》、《逃亡者与难民》等。这些作品糅合了讽刺、戏剧性、恐怖等元素，呈现出一种独特的超现实主义黑色幽默。其中，《搏击俱乐部》被导演大卫•芬奇改编成同名电影，他也因此得到了来自全世界的关注和认可。