Lyrical and blackly comic, A Provincial Death is a startlingly original meditation on solitude and perseverance, the consolations of art and philosophy, and the capacity of human beings to endure catastrophe.

It is a hot, summer morning and Smyth, a struggling writer and academic, wakes to discover he is stranded alone on a rock in the Irish Sea. As he clings on in hope of salvation, he is assailed by broken memories and the failures of his past. Fragmented images of the previous day come to him: a mysterious research institute, a dead forest, a rickety boat captained by a gruff old fisherman, an eccentric academic named McGovern who believed that the Moon was about to crash into the Earth, destroying everything. Confused, weary and sore, and with the tide rising inexorably and strange sea creatures circling, Smyth tries to make sense of an arbitrary world in a desperate bid for survival.

‘A dark, courageous novel for those who like their fiction experimental, no chaser.’ (The Irish Times)

‘Smith’s descriptive writing is breathtaking…sentences of enormous power.’ (Irish Literary Supplement)

‘Smith uses the novel as a vehicle to exercise concerns philosophical, ecological and deeply personal…a truly interesting and genuinely experimental foray into Irish writing.' (Books Ireland)

‘Eoghan Smith has elegantly captured the torment and splendour that permeates this rudderless existence of ours…a beautifully composed novel that will leave you in the pleasurable ache of unanswerable questions.’ (writing.ie)

'Eoghan Smith's writing is pure poetry in places…the mix of dark humour and mystery makes for a wonderful read’. (Buzz Magazine)

A Provincial Death is published by Dedalus Books (2022)