Restless

This is Rogal's second short story collection. Here the reader returns to Rogal's Kafkaesque world of the bizarre. His nimble and energetic writing, coupled with a brittle rhythm, lead the reader down the dark corridors of these stories. Rogal's writing is tautly realist and, in turn, lyrically surreal, while being shot through with dark humour. He explodes the extraordinary out of ordinary. But the most salient feature of Rogal's work is its lack of sentimentality. In the story 'Dress Rehearsal', mass murder is made a necessary exercise in efficiency. 'Three Sketches Toward A Self-Portrait by Sigmund Freud' makes use of psychological concepts such as obsession, paranoia, low self-esteem, role-playing, the Oedipus Complex, colour symbology and more in order to demonstrate how seemingly ordinary, everyday behaviour can be seen as a form of neurosis (or psychosis). The collection closes with 'Restless and Fleeting', dealing with a man's search for love and meaning in a society which is fixated on the hypocritical concept of 'family values'.