Nikolai Duffy in conversation with Jenn Ashworth

Blackwell’s Manchester hosts the launch of Common, the debut novel by Nikolai Duffy, who will be in conversation with Jenn Ashworth.

The novel follows Robert, who, after the death of his aunt, returns to his childhood home in Hampshire. Confronted with the past, he builds a hut on Ludshott Common and spends seven days reflecting on marriage, career, parenthood, his father’s alcoholism, and his aunt’s example of living freely. Lyrical and irreverent, Common offers a moving meditation on solitude, freedom, responsibility, and the legacies we inherit.

Nikolai Duffy is the author of two poetry collections and the literary non-fiction book Relative Strangeness: Reading Rosmarie Waldrop. His work has been performed internationally, and in 2019 he received a UNESCO City of Literature Residency in Ljubljana. He teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he co-directs the Manchester Poetry Group. Jenn Ashworth is a novelist and academic whose work includes The Parallel Path.