Gerard Donovan

Gerard Donovan, is an Irish-born novelist, photographer and poet living in Plymouth, England, working as a lecturer at the University of Plymouth.

Career

Donovan attracted immediate critical acclaim with his debut novel Schopenhauer's Telescope, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2003, and which won the Kerry Group [Irish Fiction Award] in 2004. His subsequent novels include Doctor Salt, Julius Winsome, and Sunless. However, Sunless is essentially a rewritten version of Doctor Salt—ultimately very different from the earlier novel, but built upon the same basic narrative elements—of which Donovan has said: "Doctor Salt... was a first draft of Sunless. I wrote too fast, and the sense I was after just wasn't in the novel.... I saw the chance to write the real novel, if you like, and this I hope I've done in Sunless."
Before writing prose, Donovan published three collections of poetry: Columbus Rides Again, Kings and Bicycles, and The Lighthouse. His next publication was Young Irelanders - a collection of short stories set in Ireland. He was said to be working on a novel set in early twentieth-century Europe.