21st century
A01=Nikolai Duffy
adultery
aging
anxiety
art
Author_Nikolai Duffy
books fiction
Category=FB
classic
death
divorce
drama
england
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
family
fiction
fiction books
fiction psychological
french
friendship
german
grief
happiness
identity
infidelity
literary fiction
literature
love
marriage
memory
mental health
modern
music
mystery
novella
novels
parents
philosophy
psychoanalysis
psychological thriller
psychology
realistic fiction books
relationship
relationships
roman
romance
short stories
spirit
spirituality
suspense
teacher
translation
Product details
- ISBN 9781915983428
- Dimensions: 127 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 21 Oct 2025
- Publisher: Goldsmiths, University of London
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
A coming to terms with marriage and career, the life-long impact of a father’s alcoholism, and an aunt’s insistent example to live an unroofed life.
“I had gone to the common under the vague impression that I wished to recapture something of a life I no longer possessed.”
Following his aunt Abilene’s death, Robert travels from Manchester to Hampshire to settle her estate. Instead of fulfilling his executor duties, he impulsively builds a hut on nearby Ludshott Common and stays for seven days. This introspective novel explores his week in nature as he grapples with loss, disillusionment, marriage, career, parenthood, white male privilege, and his father’s alcoholism.
Blending fiction, auto-fiction, and place writing, Common is a novel about solitude, connection, and the fragile peace we attempt to make with ourselves—a portrait of
renewal, reckoning, and the frequently failed attempt to reconnect with both past legacies and present realities.
Nikolai Duffy is the author of two previous cross-genre poetry collections, and the literary non-fiction book, Relative Strangeness: Reading Rosmarie
Waldrop. His creative work has been read and performed internationally,.In 2019 he was awarded a UNESCO City of Literature Residency in Ljubljana.
Common is his first novel. He teaches in the English Department at Manchester Metropolitan University.
