Unhinged

Unhinged follows Marco Ferrari, a fifty-eight-year-old retired financier living in affluent Clifton, Cape Town, who has built a fortress of solitude around himself following his divorce from Rochelle. Despite his material wealth, a clifftop apartment, extensive library, and collection of motorcycles and surfboards, Marco struggles with profound loneliness and a growing sense of disconnection from life. Encouraged by his childhood friend Julia, Marco ventures into the world of dating apps, embarking on a series of increasingly bizarre encounters. From a therapist who becomes an obsessive stalker to a French diplomat with boundary issues and a motorcycle-riding love triangle, each relationship reveals more about Marco's pattern of emotional avoidance and his tendency to idealize love rather than engage with it authentically. When Marco meets Maria, a mysterious Belarusian woman, he believes he has finally found genuine connection. Their passionate romance takes him on an odyssey to Russia, where he discovers she is an intelligence agent. Despite this betrayal, Marco is recruited by the SVR and falls deeper into a surreal world of espionage. Just as Marco's life seems to find purpose, he also discovers he has a twenty-six-year-old son from a past relationship, a revelation that transforms his understanding of family and legacy. The novel explores whether happiness can exist as a dream, and whether reality itself is merely a matter of perception.