Penelope Curtis is a specialist in modern and contemporary sculpture who has directed the Henry Moore Institute, Tate Britain and the Gulbenkian. Since leaving Lisbon in 2021 she has focused on writing fiction, publishing After Nora in 2024, followed by two further novels in 2026.

‘It is a rare pleasure to read such beautifully clear prose, with its attractively poignant mixture of sadness and calm.’ - Gavin Bryars‘Rich and spare, idiosyncratic yet full of big currents of life and history . . . The times feel simultaneous, all here at once on the surface of the present, as well as reaching and echoing across centuries. Young Isaac will live in my mind – wandering about planning his sundial – but the whole works as a sort of astronomical clock with its moving parts aligning in different ways.’ - Alexandra Harris