The novelist and oncologist on capturing the shock of interning in a hospital, how he fits writing around medicine, and being blown away by Fernanda Melchor
Austin Duffy, 47, was born in Dundalk and lives in Howth, north of Dublin, where he works as an oncologist at the city’s Mater hospital. His two previous novels, This Living and Immortal Thing, shortlisted for the Kerry Group Irish novel of the year, and Ten Days, about early dementia, were both set in New York, where Duffy met his wife, the painter Naomi Taitz Duffy, after winning a research fellowship to work at the Memorial Sloan Kettering cancer centre in Manhattan in 2006. His new novel, The Night Interns, follows three trainee medics on a Dublin surgical ward.
What led you to write The Night Interns?
It’s not a memoir, but I still have vivid memories of my intern year when I was doing medicine [at Trinity College Dublin in the 90s] and always knew I wanted to write about the experience at some point. You’re thrust into this world where you quickly find out the inadequacy of the theoretical knowledge you’re relying on from your studies. I wanted to immerse the reader in the terror – maybe that’s too strong a word, maybe it isn’t – of being on call and being asked to be the first person to figure things out for people who are sick. The structure, with no chapters, no real breaks, is meant to make you feel like you can’t come up for air.
The Night Interns by Austin Duffy is published by Granta (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
