A Certain Slant of Light

Art historical research combined with literary fiction. Gathering accounts of trauma and loss from the lives of people and places, past and present: of Isadora Duncan, Ana Mendietta, WG Sebald and Pier Paolo Pasolini; of a car crash, a fall from a skyscraper, the photographs of a murderer, a journey to The Gate of the Kiss; he travels through a landscape of half-remembered events and lost works of art, attempting to fathom lives pieced together from borrowed and fragmentary stories of history, memory and existence; trying to recover his own life. Part fiction, part essay, part meditation on absence and grief, A Certain Slant of Light is a profound and moving attempt to trace the connections, however unlikely and strange, between art, history and life. A unique and beautiful book, profusely illustrated, A Certain Slant of Light was shortlisted for the Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize.

“Duncan White’s moving novel reverberates with unspoken grief. A beautifully written meditation on impermanence, in which art and human life are seen as signal flares into the darkness.” (Howard Cunnel, The Painter's Friend)