Karate Chop has the feel of something small and precise that leaves a bruise later.

These are compressed, clean-lined stories, often beginning in ordinary rooms and ending somewhere much stranger. Nors is very good at emotional misdirection: a family scene, a conversation, a recollection of childhood, a marriage, a father, a dog, a gesture — then suddenly the whole thing has shifted and the ordinary surface has cracked. Good for readers of Lydia Davis, Tove Ditlevsen, Helle Helle, Fleur Jaeggy, Joy Williams, Jenny Offill, and short fiction that prefers implication to explanation.

Pushkin Press paperback. This edition first published in 2017. Originally published in Denmark as Kantslag in 2008. Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken. Good second-hand condition with light handling/shelfwear.