Content Warning: general graphic themes, violence, severe abuse and (sexual) trauma. Reader discretion advised.

All extreme and ‘platterpunk’ novels share the same connective tissue at their hearts: they aim to shock, disturb, and upset the reader.

I grew up reading disturbing books from a young age. Therefore, I would like to expose some overlooked titles released before 2020 that may have slipped through the cracks for modern readers. 

Novels containing extreme or disturbing content have a long, controversial history dating as far back as the 1960s when Hubert Selby Jr’s novel ‘Last Exit To Brooklyn’ was banned in the UK due to its gratuitous depictions of harrowing drug addiction and sexual assault; all told from the perspectives of society’s ‘undesirable’ classes of the time such as sex workers, drug addicts, and the queer community.

Hubert Selby Jr sought to shine a spotlight on society’s damaged saints: true wounded souls whose survival in the face of adversity and caste systems still inspires marginalised readers over sixty years later. 

5. Last Exit To Brooklyn (1964) – Hubert Selby Jr

In the subsequent decades since its release, readers have described the novel as a descent into Hell, and I am inclined to agree.

Last Exit introduces us to a parade of self-debasing, deeply wounded people; sex workers, addicts, Queer people who repress their sexuality, mothers who hate their children, and Misandrists who all populate the underbelly of New York.

The prose is hypnotic and flows like the poetry of William S. Burroughs; therefore, this is a beautifully written book, which only adds to the grimy feeling once the hellish actions of our characters are pored over in lurid detail.

This book serves as a blueprint for authors like Irvine Welsh, Donald Ray Pollock, and James Frey, and the prose flows in a stream-of-consciousness, which immediately transplants you into this traumatic world alongside its most heinous players.

Last Exit To Brooklyn wishes to hold a broken mirror up to a society which is crumbling beneath the weight of its vices. However, at its core lies the message of hope.

The empathy and vitriol for injustice instilled in a young boy with a crush on a sex worker may break you, but it will also teach the reader to look for optimism, even in the most hopeless of places.

4. Books of Blood, Vol 1-3 (1984) – Clive Barker

Books of Blood is Clive Barker’s compendium of horrific short stories, including Dread, Rawhead Rex, and The Midnight Meat Train, which have since been adapted into feature films.

This collection of short stories covers every Horror fan’s favourite subgenres, including Body Horror, Psychological Horror, Dark Fantasy, and Erotic. Regardless of genre, they all share a commonality: extremity.

A standout tale, Jacqueline Ess and Her Will and Testament includes some of the most horrendous, gag-worthy body horror I have ever seen described, and it does so through the lens of female rage.

Clive Barker is a universal favourite for many reasons, yet it is his ability to romanticise the monstrous and to tantalise with taboo which sets him apart from modern Extreme Horror writers.

Rawhead Rex involves an unholy pact between a lunatic priest and an abomination unearthed from deep within the soil, wherein bodily fluids are exchanged, and the concept of blasphemy is pushed to its most extreme reaches. The Books Of Blood largely revolves around a unifying theme: making pacts which may have hidden and devastating prices to pay.

If you like to mix up your flavours of Extreme Horror, Books Of Blood may have a short story especially tailored to your more deplorable tastes.

3. Geek Love (1989) – Katherine Dunn

Geek Love may be the most controversial pick of this list.

Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis: a travelling Carny family whose life’s work is to breed several children with physical deformities. Al and Lil are parents who dote on their children because of their malformed physical attributes, which they have constructed themselves through unnatural selection.

You see, the Binewskis are proud Carnies who love the marginalised world in which they inhabit; they also know that sideshow ‘freaks’ rake in a lot of cash from Rubes who love nothing more than to satiate their curiosity at the expense of those exiled from society.

When Al and Lil’s first child, Arty, was conceived, he was born with Thalidomide disease (stunted growth in limbs with a notable lack of digits), and as soon as he was old enough, he was integrated into the family’s travelling sideshow, where audiences loved him.

Thus, a plan was formed: Al and Lil began to intentionally conceive children with deformities through various bizarre methods, like using experimental drugs during pregnancy or even consuming radioactive materials to ensure that their bloodline remains profitable.

The story offers an insight into nomadic and alternative lifestyles, and plays with the concept of consent, ‘playing God’, and how humans have a natural disposition for ‘othering’ anyone different from themselves.

Expect cults, horrific acts of self-mutilation, and a warped family reminiscent of the Peacocks from the infamous X-Files episode ‘Home’.

Geek Love offers a shocking, taboo love story which deals with themes of incest, child abuse, and debasement for profit. However, at its core lies an empathetic heart.

 2. Haunted (2005) – Chuck Palahniuk

Haunted is a collection of twenty-three short stories stitched together via various narrators.

When a group of artists respond to an ad headlined ‘Artists Retreat: Abandon your life for three months’, they gather in an ornate old theatre, free of their phones, and isolate from the outside world.

This retreat is intended to break down our humble storytellers; they are left without electricity and sit by candlelight with the scarcest of food rations provided. As the group grow increasingly paranoid and hungry, their sordid tales become more and more depraved.

The twenty-three strangers recount biographical tales, poetry, and fictitious stories, with each member’s content growing more disturbing than the last tale.

Chuck Palahniuk is a Queer author whose intention is to offend and confront his viewer, even around LGBTQ themes, so go into this one expecting to be offended as this may soften the blow.

Each story begins innocently enough before it crescendos into pornographic, violent, and grotesque conclusions.

It is worth noting that when this book was released, Palahniuk set out on a tour where he signed copies and read excerpts from it. Dozens of people across dozens of countries reported fainting, vomiting, and even trying to attack the author over the extreme content contained within the pages, particularly over one specific story.

This infamous tale is ‘Guts’, which made me physically ill despite my strong stomach. Be warned, ‘Guts’ may just put you off masturbation for life.

1. Exquisite Corpse (1996) – Poppy Z Brite

(I will be referring to Poppy by they/them pronouns as, during his time of writing under the PBZ penname, he had not yet fully embraced his gender identity or transitioned. He is now known as Billy Martin.)

Growing up as a Goth outsider with a penchant for the macabre, Poppy Z Brite was a breath of decaying air.

Their eloquent and descriptive writing style was laden with beautifully detailed prose which immersed the reader in their nighttime world of New Orleans in the 1990s. 

An example of such, “His face was a red slick, featureless, blind. He was nothing but particles now, if he had ever been anything more. I had only altered the speed at which his particles were vibrating.’’

Exquisite Corpse is largely told from the perspective of Andrew Compton, a serial killer who escapes his high-security prison in London by feigning his death. Unleashed upon an unsuspecting society, Andrew’s voracious appetite for death and sex leads him to the vibrant streets of New Orleans, where good bourbon flows like water and pretty, young rent-boys appear like spectres beneath street lanterns at night.

When Andrew’s usual carnal desires fail to excite him, he teams up with Jay: a warped playboy who likes to push his living ‘art’ to its most deviant of limits. The perverse pair set their sights upon their most exquisite of targets – Tran, a young Queer Vietnamese runaway whose naivety may lead him into the maws of death.

If you aren’t aware, an Exquisite Corpse is a children’s art game wherein one person draws one part of a body, for example, the legs. The paper is then folded in half and passed onto the next person, who draws the mid-section, and so forth.

In this book, Andrew and Jay are committed to creating their own Exquisite Corpse: a Frankenstein’s plaything for their most taboo carnal desires.

Brite played with real-world techniques perpetrated by one of America’s most notorious serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer, in a time before social media or Netflix ever dared to broach the subject.

This book pores over the defilement of the human form in lurid detail, yet at its heart lies a message about fighting for one’s own identity in a world which may hate you for that very identity. Its themes are shocking, however, Brite’s empathetic approach to their characters results in a harrowing and emotional tale, which may leave you crying once you have finished emptying your stomach contents.

I adore this book, and at a time in my life (late 90s/early 00s) where I would experience street harassment and violent assault simply for being Goth and Queer, this story served as a rallying call; it gave a voice to the voiceless, and I adore it to this day, over twenty-five years later.