With the rapid approach of the end of his professional life, Marcus O is quietly wondering what's next. Well first there's a workplace nemesis he aspires to humiliate. And then there's a style-conscious student whose shallow interests seem calculated to aggravate Marcus alone. And finally there are the nights scouring the web and composing attractive answers to profile questions generated by a seniors' online dating site he's recently joined. Set in a near future where everything is pretty much the same-or maybe a touch worse-Oldness; or The Last Ditch Efforts of Marcus O presents a satiric portrait of a contradictory man in a complicated place and time whose reality may be just over the horizon.

Brett Josef Grubisic's first novel, The Age of Cities, was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Prize. He's the author of Understanding Beryl Bainbridge and co-editor of National Plots: Historical Fiction and Changing Ideas of Canada. He teaches at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

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"Grubisic's take-no-prisoners assault on academia, loneliness, western real estate-all our current craziness-arrives like a satirical tsunami, earning its place among the finest dystopias." -Toronto Star

"Frequently hilarious, genuinely thought-provoking, and surprisingly moving, Oldness is a vivid, multi-faceted portrait of a man refusing to go gentle into that good night, lashing out petulantly and helplessly at a world that has passed him by." -Quill and Quire

"Brett Josef Grubisic's latest novel, Oldness; or, the Last-Ditch Efforts of Marcus O, explores this subject, oldness. In my hands it would have been tragedy, full stop. In his, dour comedy. It is flippant and learned, exhaustively current, cutting edge even, yet still with a whiff of eczema salve." -BC BookWorld