ACCORDING to critic and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, abjection involves either a confrontation with our sense of physical being or a separation between the self and a rejected “other.” Objects of revulsion can be tangible, such as faeces and bodily fluids, but some forms of dread are abstract and ambiguous.

The New Abject collection of horror stories draws on the broad nature of Kristeva’s definition, which has inspired a loosely related set of tales that deal with the things that make us shudder and retch.