'An utterly distinctive voice in contemporary Irish literature' Irish Times'One of our most original writers' Irish IndependentSummer, 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.'An original voice, a writer who has come to recreate the world on his own terms' Colm Tóibín'An elegant rarity in contemporary fiction' Cathy Sweeney
Adrian Duncan is an Irish artist and writer. He is the author of Love Notes from a German Building Site, which won the John McGahern Book Prize, A Sabbatical in Leipzig, which was shortlisted for the Kerry Novel of the Year, The Geometer Lobachevsky and The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth.
Adrian Duncan's account of a mathematical prodigy and the characters who shape her life is for me his best work yet. The dual timelines build into a compelling enquiry into how we perceive and affect the world that we pass through. It's very moving, very funny, and it will make your brain dance