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Oct 20, 2023

two new novels scooped by Tuskar Rock Press

Adrian Duncan’s

Tuskar Rock Press co-founders Colm Tóibín and Peter Straus acquired World English Language rights for two new novels by Adrian Duncan from Marianne Gunn O’Connor at Marianne Gunn O’Connor Literary 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 ebooks in the UK and Ireland.

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Colm Tóibín says: ‘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.’


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



About The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth:

John Molloy, an Irish restorative sculptor meets an Italian sociologist Bernadette Basagni while working on a contemporary-art project in the Alpine city of I_.

As he falls in love, a distressing moment from his youth rises into view - when his mother, Sandra, while one night praying alone at a country grotto, has a holy vision that leads to his family’s ostracisation and disintegration. The disastrous outfall of this has resonated unchecked through his life.

The Gorgeous Inertia of the Earth 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 him 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 Bologna, where John must confront not just his present and his past but also the bedrock of his psyche.


About Catherine Carolan:

Catherine Carolan is a short historical novel/portrait told in third-person syncopation between the summers of 1923 and 1951.


Part 1 recounts a summer in post-Civil War rural Ireland where the six-year-old Catherine Carolan slowly reveals to her country teacher, Master Francis, her intellect as being one of genius. Meanwhile her father, Moore Carolan, a wealthy farmer, has begun betting large sums of money on foreign currency and this betting leads to his family’s ruination. Part 2 take place over five weeks in early summer of 1951 where a now 34-year-old Catherine Carolan in a beach house south of Aberdeen nurses to his passing a college professor, Dr Josef Alois, whom she met at Keble College, Oxford and with whom she fell in love while they both deputised in Guy’s Hospital in London during the War.

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MARIANNE GUNN O'CONNOR
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