Midfield Dynamo (stories)
Irish edition, The Lilliput Press, March 2021

* Longlisted for the 2021 Edge Hill Prize




... Imaginations such as his are rare indeed, especially combined with the steely, forensic technical daring on view here.
Make no mistake about it: Adrian Duncan is an artist of the highest order.

Patrick McCabe




... exhilarating ...

Dublin Review of Books





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Fascinating: freighted with echoes of Bruno Schulz, Bohumil Hrabal,the quotidian is here
magnified beneath the fierce, unforgiving light of a laboratory lamp – the world recalibrated as
a compellingly formal industrial tableau – at all times arrestingly surgically exact, but never at
the expense of wonderment or mystery. Impressively and unselfconsciously global, it presents
as a perfectly-judged kabuki dance along, as the author might say himself, the calcified
grid-lines of Ireland and Europe’s immediate present and abstract pre-history.

– Patrick McCabe



I loved this collection. With an engineer’s eye Duncan draws his stories in precise and plain prose and then, with the anarchic brilliance of an artist, colours them with arresting peculiarities and exhilarating flights of poetry. A unique vision of the ordinary strangeness of life.

– Cathy Sweeney




PRESS



Adrian Duncan’s arresting new collection of stories consolidates his reputation as one of the most captivating and distinctive voices in contemporary Irish writing.

– Michael Cronin, The Irish Times, April 2021



These stories seek and discover scenes of beauty – in the process permitting notes of lyricism to earn their place – in overlooked and distinctly unglamorous contexts, to deeply moving effect.

– Neil Hegarty, Dublin Review of Books, June 2021



A formidable line-up of insights ... is a very impressive book
of short stories, which shine a light on the strangeness and absurdities
of the modern world.

– Matthew Geden, The Irish Examiner, May 2021



a remarkable collection... haunting
Special mention for Prosinecki ... perhaps one of the best fictional treatments of football in recent memory.

– Alexander Wells, Exberliner, March 2021



... the world view presented here is fascinatingly off-kilter. A bucket of salt in an art gallery might reveal Vincent’s mediocrity as an artist in the final story, but this collection confirms that the opposite is true of Adrian Duncan.

– Pat Carty, Hot Press, March 2021



These understated and immensely compassionate stories make a gem of a collection.

– Anne Cunningham, Meath Chronicle, March 2021



... richly imagined narratives ...

– Tom Treacy, Totally Dublin, April 2021



This collection is engrossing, seductive, deeply terrifying, and an absolute must-read for artists, engineers and those of us with a love for the beautiful game; at times, a terrible beauty.

Frank Wasser, Visual Artists' Newssheet, July/August, 2021