“Old Man Evil” is a collection of 12 stories, six of which take place in contemporary America while the other five transpire abroad. The flagship story, in which a suburban refugee finds himself in a New Mexican shantytown among derelicts and eccentrics, examines the quiet damage inflicted by social conventions. Backlighting the action is the millennia-distant afterglow of Sodom and Gomorrah. Set to Rebetika music, " Pub Blues" is an exploration of marriage and middle age that takes place in urban New Jersey. " Chele Kula" dramatizes the struggle against imperialism during the Serbian uprising against the Ottoman Empire in 1809. " Straightsville" tests the depth of a suburban heterosexual's acceptance of gay men. " Hamlet's Ghost Sighted in Frontenac, KS," in which a mixed-blood Hopi wonders whether his uncle killed his father, takes place in a single hallucinogenic night fueled by cocaine. " Tolstoy's Kunak" revolves around the friendship that formed between the Russian author and a young Chechen during the Russo-Caucasian Wars. " Mengele's Gypsy," is based on the documented relationship between Josef Mengele and a four-year-old Gypsy boy imprisoned in Auschwitz.
"A splendidly compelling and unique narrative voice."
Robert Olen Butler, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction
"Deeply romantic (in the best sense) and darkly evocative, Czyz's lush style explores regions well beyond simple narrative, probing the constantly shifting, oblique connections between failure, memory and the forever-incomplete nature of human desire. A moody, gorgeous and formally innovative collection, Adrift in a Vanishing City deserves a wide audience among readers who understand that fiction is about more than getting a character from one room to the next."
