X+Y=K

An electrifying fusion of memoir, ghost story and speculative fiction from the late Ciaran Carson 

Carson’s lifelong preoccupations with memory, time and perception are pushed into audacious new territory in this final, astonishing work. Moving between Belfast and London, the novel traces the fractured consciousness of Kilpatrick, a man haunted by migraine visions, childhood trauma and the spectral machinery of history. As séances, scientific experiments and art-history musings bleed into one another, the boundaries between worlds grow porous: tables levitate, cities shimmer like palimpsests and the dead return in flickers of light. 

Written with Carson’s trademark blend of forensic detail and lyrical expansiveness, in this animated narrative, parallel realities overlap, surveillance and spiritualism mirror each other and every object – paintings, watches, typewriters – carries a hidden aura. 

A profound meditation on vulnerability, doubleness and the stories we invent to survive, X+Y=K is Carson’s final, radiant act of imagination.