The Tourist Butcher

Taken from his highly successful collection, these two stories take unconventional positions towards short story archetypes. The Tourist Butcher is an unflinching tale about a serial killer who prepares his victims for a culinary dish, while Memories in Aluminium Foil follows the nightmares and existential crisis of a psychology student who receives a slice of human brain in aluminium foil as a gift from his biologist roommate.In the original Dutch collection, Ouariachi stated that his goal was to ‘bring the short story back to the campfire’, allowing his stories to hold up a mirror to the reader, rather than telling them what to achieve. These two stories, appearing in English for the first time, demonstrate his success: he has created a pair of dark, horrifying underworlds for the reader’s mind to get lost in, whilst maintaining a language that is light and graceful.