Adrian Duncan Libros

Paul, a young Irish engineer, follows Evelyn to Berlin. A moving novel about language, memory, building and love.

Michael has been away from Ireland for most of his life and lives alone in Bilbao after the death of Catherine, his girlfriend. Each day he listens to two versions of the same piece of music before walking the same route to visit Richard Serra's enormous installation, The Matter of Time, in the Guggenheim. As he walks, his thoughts circle around the five-year period of mental agitation spent in Leipzig with Catherine. This 'sabbatical', caused by the stress of his job and the suicide of a former colleague, splits his career as an engineer into two distinct parts. Intensely realistic, mapped out like Michael's intricate drawings, this is a novel of precision and beguiling intelligence.

Exploring themes of love, trauma, and self-discovery, the narrative follows John Molloy, an Irish sculptor, as he navigates his relationship with Italian sociologist Bernadette Basagni against the backdrop of a contemporary-art project in an Alpine city. John's past resurfaces, particularly a pivotal moment involving his mother's holy vision that led to family ostracization. The story unfolds in two parts: the first through fragmented glimpses of his journey, and the second through a reflective odyssey in Bologna, where he confronts his history and inner struggles.

From award-winning author Adrian Duncan comes his first collection of astonishing short stories. These modern stories have been written over the past decade, half having been previously published in The Moth, The Stinging Fly, Dublin Review and elsewhere, half completely new. Patterning and happenstance make up the rich quotidian lives of the characters portrayed in these strange, energetic tales. The loose figures of young artists, footballers and artisan engineers act out against diverse backgrounds from Dublin’s northside to Hamburg, Abu Dhabi and Accra, lives tethered yet adrift in a random universe of hard scrabble and occasional illumination. The prose is spare, precise and imagistic, the humour dark and absurdist, shot through with an underlying humanity that has become the trademark of this remarkable writer.Taking inspiration from his childhood fascination with football team formations, Duncan arranges this collection with an eye to how each piece interacts with the others: ‘While looking at a starting eleven and imagining the team’s possible patterns of movement on the field of play, one question always prevails: What is behind all of this?’

An inventive and original Irish writer arrives at the Tuskar Rock list on a wave of prize listings and critical prestige.

Bungalow Bliss, first published in 1971, radically transformed housing in Ireland. Now, for the first time, author and structural engineer Adrian Duncan looks at the cultural impact that Bungalow Bliss and the accessible bungalow design had on the housing market, the Irish landscape, and on the individual families who made these bungalows their homes.