Rencontre with
Adrian Duncan

To mark the launch of the French translation, The Geometer Lobachevsky (Le Géomètre Lobachevski) published by Les Grands Vents (translated by Marie Hermet), award-winning author Adrian Duncan will be at the CCI to discuss exile and inner metamorphosis.

Set in the early 1950s, the story follows Soviet geometer (mathematician) Nikolai Lobachevsky who is a Glav Torf representative aiding Bord na Móna with a land survey. In Ireland on this state visit, he receives a letter from the MGB ordering him back to Leningrad for ‘a special appointment’. Immediately suspicious, he goes into hiding on a small island in the Shannon Estuary where he waits in the hope of some day returning safely home.

Adrian Duncan has gone from strength to strength in his writing career since first publishing with Lilliput in 2019. He won the inaugural John McGahern Annual Book Prize 2020 for Love Notes from a German Building Site (2019) and was shortlisted for the Dalkey Novel of the Year Award 2020 for the same. He was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Novel of the Year Award 2021 for his second novel, A Sabbatical in Leipzig (2020), and his collection of short stories, Midfield Dynamo (2021), was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. The Geometer Lobachevsky was shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize and the 2023 Kerry Group Novel of the Year

"A masterful meditation on exile ... by one of our most original writers" (Irish Independent)