PATRICIA DUNCKER

‍Patricia Duncker is the author of Hallucinating Foucault (winner of the Dillons First Fiction Award and the McKitterick Prize in 1996), The Deadly Space Between, James Miranda Barry and Miss Webster and Chérif (shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2007). She has written two books of short fiction, Monsieur Shoushana's Lemon Trees (shortlisted for the Macmillan Silver Pen Award in 1997) and Seven Tales of Sex and Death, and a collection of essays on writing and contemporary literature, Writing on the Wall. In 2010 she published The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge (shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger Award 2010 and the Green Carnation Prize 2011). Her most recent novel, the critically acclaimed Sophie and the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance (2015), was also shortlisted for the Green Carnation Award 2015. 

‍Soulmining

‍Back in April 2026 I received a delightful invitation from my former colleague at Aberystwyth University, David Ian Rabey, an admired playwright and critic. I live on the side of the mountain above Machynlleth; he lives close to the Dyfi valley estuary. He has a regular music-and-conversation show on our local radio station.

‍This morning I've recorded a new episode of my Radio Dyfi chat show.

‍Patricia, would you be willing to be my guest sometime on this? An hour of conversation and your music choices, prerecorded at a mutually convenient time, before transmission.

‍cariad mawr!

‍So of course the answer was yes, and here comes the show, originally broadcast live on 23rd June 2026. I took the opportunity to talk about the novel I am writing now: The English Girl and the Undertaker. It’s a story of the lover and the loved in many different ways. I based the figure of the undertaker on my memories of my father and the effect he had on other people. For the radio show, “Soulmining,” I chose the music he loved. It felt like a miracle to hear those wonderful voices from the past again.

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‍Listen to the radio show (Mixcloud website) 

All Rights Reserved. Patricia Duncker 2026