Dennis Oldham thought he understood the transaction between art and life—until life began to imitate the most unsettling kind of art.

A respected art critic and sculptor, Dennis navigates the interconnected worlds of Sydney’s galleries, a mysterious residency at an American college, and the complex relationships that define him. When a chance encounter with a woman selling raffle tickets leads to an unexpected prize—a family holiday with his neighbor Kate and her teenage daughter—Dennis finds himself drawn into something far more enigmatic than a simple getaway.

From the claustrophobic corridors of Goldsworth College to a remote retreat run by the shadowy organization “KU,” from intimate dinners in Leichhardt to midnight wanderings through labyrinthine gardens, Dennis discovers that the line between observer and observed, between the authentic and the artificial, is thinner than he ever imagined.

As he moves through a world where women create art from vine stems that seem to twist with their own dark purpose, where languages without meaning are taught with religious fervor, and where every relationship carries the weight of unspoken transactions, Dennis must confront the possibility that he is not the curator of his own experience—but merely another exhibit in someone else’s collection.

K U is a haunting exploration of art, desire, and the stories we tell ourselves about freedom, weaving together the mundane and the sinister in a narrative as complex and beautiful as the sculptures that haunt its pages.

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