The Complete Novels (Everyman's Library)

About this book

Flann OBrien along with Joyce and Beckett is part of the holy trinity of modern Irish literature. His five novelscollected here in one volumeare a monument to his inspired lunacy and gleefully demented genius. OBriens masterpiece At Swim-Two-Birds is an exuberant literary send-up and one of the funniest novels of the twentieth century. The novels narrator is writing a novel about another man writing a novel in a Celtic knot of interlocking stories. The riotous cast of characters includes figures stolen from Gaelic legends along with assorted students fairies ordinary Dubliners and cowboys some of whom try to break free of their authors control and destroy him. The narrator of The Third Policeman who has forgotten his name is a student of philosophy who has committed murder and wanders into a surreal hell where he encounters such oddities as the ghost of his victim three policeman who experiment with space and time and his own soul (who is named Joe). The Poor Mouth a bleakly hilarious portrait of peasants in a village dominated by pigs potatoes and endless rain is a giddy parody aimed at those who would romanticize Gaelic culture. A nave young orphan narrates the deadpan farce The Hard Life and The Dalkey Archive is an outrageous satiric fantasy featuring a mad scientist who uses relativity to age his whiskey a policeman who believes men can turn into bicycles and an elderly bar-tending James Joyce. With a new Introduction by Keith Donohue