Off-ramp is the debut short fiction collection
of Gary Cummiskey and consists of ten stories often characterised by a surreal
eroticism. Set mainly in contemporary South Africa, the book opens with a young man’s hallucinatory encounter
with a derelict in a Johannesburg street; there is a couple’s visit to a
sinister Free State farm; an editor who reluctantly agrees to meet an aspiring
woman writer at midnight; two young men who go out on a drinking spree as the
country teeters on civil war; a restless teenager who stalks an unknown woman;
and a middle-aged academic who engages in an obsessive, sadistic relationship
with a prostitute.
The stories in this startling collection offer a vision of individuals who are slowly being devoured by paranoia and absurdity. Beyond the off-ramp lies a pervasive, heavy dread and an unnameable, perhaps unknowable fear. Cummiskey creates an off-kilter reality that is both disturbing and compelling.
140 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-9869982-3-2
Estimated retail price: R145.00
The stories in this startling collection offer a vision of individuals who are slowly being devoured by paranoia and absurdity. Beyond the off-ramp lies a pervasive, heavy dread and an unnameable, perhaps unknowable fear. Cummiskey creates an off-kilter reality that is both disturbing and compelling.
140 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-9869982-3-2
Estimated retail price: R145.00
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