"The Exterminating Angel", excerpt

“While rummaging the top of the bedroom wardrobe, Karla Engel found a black leather case. When she opened it, she found the o-wakizashi that her father had offered her on her sixteenth birthday. It was a Japanese sword with a curved blade, made of tempered steel, from the Gendaito period, about 24 inches long, ivory grip, and a richly ornamented guard. (...) She had never seen the o-wakizashi as a weapon of destruction – able to cut a block of cement in half when handled by a strong arm – much by her father’s influence, a talented swordsman and swords’ collector. (...) To Karla Engel’s father, handling a sword was an art form that could be either baroque, full of frills and arabesques drawn in the air, or minimalist, stripped of fantasy, cold and precise, like an exact science.”
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