The Teeth of a Slow Machine

This daring, irreverent short-story collection dissects and explores the conundrums of contemporary life and what it is to be human, through a world very like our own.

A corporate satire follows a pair of dark operatives working for a chicken franchise as they take careful revenge on counterfeiters. A coder calculates the odds of her husband's cold developing complications and killing him, in a story told in code. A relationship at breaking point is told via a scrambled timeline of events that works like a puzzle. A man spends his inheritance on technology that will allow him to fly. And an archeologist working for mining companies against the interests of Indigenous communities develops a mysterious psychological condition that causes her to black out and commit extreme acts of generosity.

Praise for The Teeth of a Slow Machine

'At turns dreamlike, luminously satirical, fever-pitched and achingly mortal, the scope of Andrew Roff's debut collection is utterly refreshing and a joy to linger in.' - Josephine Rowe

'A bold and exciting collection.' - Laura Elvery

'A collection bursting with vitality and variety, the stories ranging widely in form and theme, sometimes affecting, sometimes amusing, and never less than wildly entertaining.' - Ryan O'Neill

Andrew Roff's short fiction has appeared in Meanjin, Overland, Griffith Review and Going Down Swinging, among other outlets. He was the winner of the 2020 Peter Carey Short Story Award and the 2018 Margaret River Press Short Story Competition, as well as having been shortlisted and commended in many other short story prizes. In 2016, his first novel was shortlisted for the Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript Award at Adelaide Writers Week.