The Institute for Creative Dying

You wouldn’t know it was there, the unnumbered house behind the iron-grille gate, just below the craggy rocks of Northcliff Ridge. To the untrained eye the rambling property might seem neglected, with its tangle of trees and untamed indigenous bush. But there is purpose here, and a peaceful, subterranean, focus on all that withers and dies. Five strangers – a model, a former nun, a couple in crisis, and an offender newly released from prison – have come here, to this place, to discover an end to life as they’ve known it. Placing their trust in their hosts, the Mortician and Mustafa, the five open their minds and bodies to an alternative experience. Not all of them will survive – or at least not in the way they imagined – but all of them will be shown the limits of their living. The Institute for Creative Dying is vivid and visceral, unique in its bold and imaginative exploration of mortality and the interconnectedness of all forms of being.

Jarred Thompson is a literary and cultural studies researcher and educator and works as a lecturer in the English Department at the University of Pretoria. He was longlisted for the Sol Plaatje Poetry Award (2017), shortlisted for the Gerald Kraak Award and Anthology (2019) and won the Afritondo short story prize in 2020. In 2021, he placed second in the Dream Foundry Contest, an international award for speculative fiction. In 2022, he was a writing fellow at The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study. His writing has appeared in local and international journals and he has been the recipient of several prestigious scholarships, including The Global Excellence and Stature Scholarship, The Chris van Wyk Creative Writing Scholarship, two National Arts Council Grants and an NRF nGAP Scholarship. The Institute for Creative Dying is his debut novel.

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