The Geometer Lobachevsky

When I was sent by the Soviet state to London to further my studies in calculus, knowing I would never become a great mathematician, I strayed instead into the foothills of anthropology.

It is 1950 and Nikolai Lobachevsky, a Glav Torf mathematician and great-grandson of his illustrious namesake, is aiding Bord na Móna by surveying a bog in the Irish Midlands. Far from home, he studies the locals and the land. One afternoon, soon after he arrives, he receives a telegram calling him back to Leningrad for a 'special appointment'. Lobachevsky may not be a great genius but he is not foolish: he recognises a death sentence when he sees one and leaves to go into hiding on a small island in the Shannon estuary, where the island families harvest seaweed and struggle to split rocks. Here Lobachevsky must think about death, how to avoid it and whether he will ever see his home again.

Following Duncan's critically acclaimed Love Notes from a German Building Site (2019), A Sabbatical in Leipzig (2020) and Midfield Dynamo (2021), Duncan's themes of emigration, displacement and work connect Ireland with the world stage. Colm Tóibín said of Love Notes: 'Written in spare, exact prose ... Duncan writes beautifully about cold weather, gruff manners, systems of hierarchy ... A portrait of work [and] a picture of a sensibility'.



SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 WALTER SCOTT PRIZE



SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR



Adrian Duncan was born in County Longford and originally trained as an engineer. He is a Berlin-based visual artist and filmmaker. His short fictions have appeared in literary journals both in Ireland and the USA. His acclaimed debut novel, Love Notes from a German Building Site, published by Lilliput and Head of Zeus in 2019. He was shortlisted for the Emerging Writer Award at the inaugural 2020 Dalkey Literary Awards and won the inaugural John McGahern Annual Book Prize. His second novel, A Sabbatical in Leipzig, was published by Lilliput in 2020 and is forthcoming from Profile Books. It was shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award 2020. His first short story collection, Midfield Dynamo, was published in 2021 and was longlisted for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize.



'To say that Adrian Duncan's The Geometer Lobachevsky is the story of a man surveying an Irish bog is akin to relegating Leonardo's Last Supper to thirteen men having dinner. Like the bog Lobachevsky is surveying, the unassuming surface conceals 'a subterranean ocean on a gusty day'.



Trained as a structural engineer, Duncan brings an engineer's precision to the thoughts, feelings, actions, observations, reminiscences and melancholy predicament of Nikolai, great-grandson of the famous mathematician. The pace is measured, the vision clear, the tensions subtle but relentless. Into an era of crash bang wallop, Duncan drops this quiet gem.'



Duncan skilfully melds past and present in a story layered with betrayal and dread.



[Duncan's] work is a study of masculinity, with its unique depiction of deeply feeling men in traditionally masculine working environments, including the dance between tenderness and violence underlying male camaraderie.



Duncan appears interested in excising any curlicues or flourishes from his prose until it is a simple, elegant, reflective surface.



Duncan's refusal to make things 'too easy', to turn away from the furrow he works towards the rising sun, is what makes his work so unique and essential.



The story he tells is a kind of deception, and it is the subtle deceptions of language that are this novel's true subject.



The Geometer Lobachevskyis quite the literary trick, delivered with precision engineering.



What is most fascinating about Adrian's writing is his ability to a story from the technical skills he has used as an engineer.



A masterful meditation. The Geometer Lobachevsky is another arresting, enigmatic work by one of our most original writers.