Tuskar Rock Press scoops two new novels by John McGahern Book Prize winner Duncan

Tuskar Rock, the Profile imprint founded by author Colm Tóibín and his agent Peter Straus, has picked up two new novels by John McGahern Book Prize-winner Adrian Duncan.

Tóibín and Straus acquired world English language rights from Marianne Gunn O’Connor at the Marianne Gunn O’Connor Agency. The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth will publish in September 2025 and Catherine Carolan will publish in October 2026, both as trade paperbacks and e-books in the UK and Ireland.

The first title is a novel told in two parts, a decade apart: the first is told in fragments or "blinks" that lead John to Bologna and Bernadette; the second opens with a letter from home asking John to pray for the speedy death of an dying friend, which sets in motion a day-long odyssey through the ancient streets and churches of the Italian city, where John must confront "not just his present and his past but also the bedrock of his psyche".

The follow-up, Catherine Carolan, is a short historical novel set in two summers decades apart. The first timeline recounts a summer in post-civil war rural Ireland where the six-year-old title character slowly reveals to her country teacher, Master Francis, her intellect "as being one of genius". The second takes place over five weeks in early summer of 1951 where a now 34-year-old Catherine in a beach house south of Aberdeen nurses a dying college professor. 

Duncan’s début novel, Love Notes from a German Building Site, won the 2019 John McGahern Book Prize. His second novel, A Sabbatical in Leipzig, was shortlisted for the Kerry Novel of the Year. His collection of short stories, Midfield Dynamo was published in 2021 and longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. His most reacent novel,  The Geometer Lobachevsky, was shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.

Tóibín said: "I am an enormous admirer of Adrian Duncan’s work and proud that we are continuing to publish him at Tuskar Rock. I am looking forward to working as his editor."

Duncan added: "I am delighted to be published again with the brilliant Tuskar Rock; and it’s an honour to be working on these two new books with the literary great, Colm Tóibín."