Flann O. Brien Books

A collection of the best pieces from the first five years of Flann O'Brien's "Cruiskeen Lawn" column, the column he wrote for "The Irish Times" from 1940-66 under the name of Myles na Gopaleen.

The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's brilliantly dark comic novel about the nature of time, death, and existence. Told by a narrator who has committed a botched robbery and brutal murder, the novel follows him and his adventures in a two-dimensional police station where, through the theories of the scientist/philosopher de Selby, he is introduced to "Atomic Theory" and its relation to bicycles, the existence of eternity (which turns out to be just down the road), and de Selby's view that the earth is not round but "sausage-shaped." With the help of his newly found soul named "Joe," he grapples with the riddles and contradictions that three eccentric policeman present to him.The last of O'Brien's novels to be published, The Third Policeman joins O'Brien's other fiction (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Best of Myles, The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.

Considered by the author to be almost a work of science fiction, the book includes among its "characters" St Augustine, James Joyce and a man who is in danger of turning into a bicycle. There is also the first published portrait of the mad scientist, who was later to achieve fame as de Selby.

The greatest satirical Irish writer of the twentieth-century turns his attention to the garrulous Irish and vividly captures the wit, extravagance and glory of their talk.

The undergraduate narrator lives with his uncle in Dublin, drinks too much with his friends and invents stories peopled with hilarious and unlikely characters, one of whom, creates a means by which women can give birth to full-grown people.

This collection looks at the years of innocence, the pains and pleasures of schooldays and the struggles of adolescence in stories by such writers as Seamus Heaney, Roddy Doyle, Flann O'Brien, William Trevor, Bryan MacMahon, Samuel Beckett, Neil Jordan, Sean O'Faolain, Edna O'Brien, Brian Friel, Maeve Binchy, Brendan Behan and many more.