A Thought Without Collision

'An utterly distinctive voice in contemporary Irish literature' IRISH TIMES 'One of our most original writers'IRISH INDEPENDENT

Summer, 1923. Six-year-old Catherine Carolan grows restless on her parents' farm. It's already clear that her intellect will soon outgrow the two-room schoolhouse across the fields. But in post-Civil War Ireland, an education is not an easy thing for a girl to access, and young Catherine is not the only one in her family who will come to tire of rural life.

Summer, 1951. To ease him through his final days, Dr. Josef Alois calls for someone from his past. Enter Catherine Carolan, now an Oxford professor. As Alois's mind and body falter, Catherine must decide how far she will follow this man that she loves.

A novel in two strands, A Thought without Collision is a beautiful meditation on how we construct our relationship to the world around us.

'Duncan offers a different model of novelistic causality, with characters that feel alive in their vivid and quiet complexity' SUSANNAH DICKEY 'Very moving, very funny, it will make your brain dance' JO LLOYD 'An original voice, a writer who has come to recreate the world on his own terms' COLM TÓIBÍN