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, and The Dalkey Archive) to ensure his place, along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, as one of Ireland's great comic geniuses.

Along with one or two books by James Joyce, Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds is the most famous (and infamous) of Irish novels published in the twentieth century.

A wildly comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, At Swim-Two-Birds is the story of a young, lazy, and frequently drunk Irish college student who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dublin. When not in bed (where he seems to spend most of his time) or reading he is composing a mischief-filled novel about Dermot Trellis, a second-rate author whose characters ultimately rebel against him and seek vengeance. From drugging him as he sleeps to dropping the ceiling on his head, these figures of Irish myth make Trellis pay dearly for his bad writing.

Hilariously funny and inventive, At Swim-Two-Birds has influenced generations of writers, opening up new possibilities for what can be done in fiction. It is a true masterpiece of Irish literature.

The Poor Mouth relates the story of one Bonaparte O'Coonassa, born in a cabin in a fictitious village called Corkadoragha in western Ireland equally renowned for its beauty and the abject poverty of its residents. Potatoes constitute the basis of his family's daily fare, and they share both bed and board with the sheep and pigs. A scathing satire on the Irish, this work brought down on the author's head the full wrath of those who saw themselves as the custodians of Irish language and tradition when it was first published in Gaelic in 1941.

Hailed as the best comic fantasy since Tristram Shandy upon its publication in 1964, The Dalkey Archive, is Flann O'Brien's fifth and final novel; or rather (as O'Brien wrote to his editor), The book is not meant to be a novel or anything of the kind but a study in derision, various writers with their styles, and sundry modes, attitudes and cults being the rats in the cage. Among the targets of O'Brien's derision are religiosity, intellectual abstractions, J. W. Dunne's and Albert Einstein's views on time and relativity, and the lives and works of Saint Augustine and James Joyce, both of whom have speaking parts in the novel. Bewildering? Yes, but as O'Brien insists, a measure of bewilderment is part of the job of literature.

The great Irish humorist and writer Flann O'Brien, aka Brian O'Nolan, aka Myles na Gopaleen, also wrote a newspaper column called Cruiskeen Lawn. The Best of Myles collects the best and funniest, covering such subjects as plumbers, the justice system, and improbable inventions.

Subtitled An Exegesis of Squalor, The Hard Life is a sober farce from a master of Irish comic fiction. Set in Dublin at the turn of the century, the novel does involve squalor--illness, alcoholism, unemployment, bodily functions, crime, illicit sex--but also investigates such diverse topics as Church history, tightrope walking, and the pressing need for public toilets for ladies. The Hard Life is straight-faced entertainment that conceals in laughter its own devious and wicked satire by one of the best known Irish writers of the 20th century.

An unprecedented gathering of the correspondence of one of the great writers of twentieth century, the Collected Letters of Flann O'Brien presents an intimate look into the life and thought of Brian O'Nolan, a prolific author of novels, stories, sketches, and journalism who famously wrote and presented works to the reading public under a variety of pseudonyms. Spanning the years 1934 to 1966, these compulsively readable letters show us O'Nolan, or O'Brien, or Myles Na gCopaleen-or whatever his name may be-at his most cantankerous and most intimate.

The Poor Mouth relates the story of one Bonaparte O'Coonassa, born in a cabin in a fictitious village called Corkadoragha in western Ireland equally renowned for its beauty and the abject poverty of its residents. Potatoes constitute the basis of his family's daily fare, and they share both bed and board with the sheep and pigs. A scathing satire on the Irish, this work brought down on the author's head the full wrath of those who saw themselves as the custodians of Irish language and tradition when it was first published in Gaelic in 1941.

Flann O'Brien, along with Joyce and Beckett, is part of the holy trinity of modern Irish literature. His five novels-collected here in one volume-are a monument to his inspired lunacy and gleefully demented genius.

O'Brien's masterpiece, At Swim-Two-Birds, is an exuberant literary send-up and one of the funniest novels of the twentieth century. The novel's 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 author's 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 na ve 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

This riotous collection at last gathers together an expansive selection of Flann O'Brien's shorter fiction in a single volume, as well as O'Brien's last and unfinished novel, Slattery's Sago Saga.

Also included are new translations of several stories originally published in Irish, and other rare pieces. With some of these stories appearing here in book form for the very first time, and others previously unavailable for decades, Short Fiction is a welcome gift for every fan of Flann O'Brien.

Rarely reprinted, rarely staged, and often entirely unpublished, Flann O'Brien's works for the stage and television are speculative, inventive, and as wickedly funny as his novels.

Myles Before Myles is a wonderfully funny selection of writings from the pen of Brian O'Nolan (aka Flann O'Brien, Myles na Gopaleen, George Knowall). In this fun-filled extravaganza he is, above all, an entertainer, a 'gas man'. Like much of O'Nolan's most entertaining work, the pieces in this did not originally appear in book form, but in periodicals and newspapers that are now almost impossible to find. Myles Before Myles reveals that some of his wittiest and most unusual were published years before Myles na Gopaleen (or Flann O'Brien) had even been born, and were destined to lie in almost complete obscurity for many decades.

-- Paperback original.
-- First U.S. edition. British publication by Hart-Davis, McGibbon Ltd ('76).
-- A companion to The Best of Myles, Further Cuttings culls more scathing selections from Cruiskeen Lawn, Flann O'Brien's column in the Irish Times written under the pseudonym Myles na Gopaleen.
-- This volume covers the years 1947-1957 and finds O'Brien's alter ego clashing with the law on numerous charges, including larceny, using bad language, and marrying without the consent of his parents. It also includes several bizarre obituaries, witty criticisms of George Bernard Shaw, Sean O' Faolain, and other literary figures, the return of the preposterous Brother, and the first article ever ascribed to Myles (published in 1940).

Using a play by Karl and Josef Capek as source, Flann O'Brien locates his insect drama in Dublin, his most familiar stalking- territory. His adaptation is a vehicle for ridicule and invective, targeting race, religion, greed, identity and purpose. With his extraordinary ear for dialogue, O'Brien creates his own fantastical world, and the outcome is a hilarious satire of Irish stereotypes - as Orangemen, Dubliners, Corkagians and culchies become warring ants, bees, crickets, dung-beetles, and other small-minded invertebrae. The lost text of this play, Hilton Edwards' prompt copy from the 1943 Gate Theatre performance, was discovered in the archives at Northwestern University, Illinois.

Flann O'Brien (1911-1966) est ne et a vecu toute sa vie en Irlande, ou il a ete eleve en gaelique aussi bien qu'en anglais. Haut fonctionnaire, il a ete, parallelement a son metier, ecrivain et chroniqueur (ses articles dans l'Irish Times, sous le pseudonyme de Myles na gCopaleen, sont des modeles de satire et d'humour, d'ailleurs regulierement reimprimes). Son premier roman, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) est aussi son chef-d'oeuvre. Le narrateur, un jeune etudiant paresseux qui vit avec son oncle et, plutot que de suivre ses cours, prefere frequenter les pubs de Dublin avec ses amis, est aussi ecrivain. De cet argument tres simple va s'ensuivre le plus extravagant, le plus fantaisiste, le plus drole des romans, et meme roman dans un roman, car nous sont aussi racontees les aventures des personnages crees par notre heros dans une parodie des romans pulp doublee d'une satire de la celtitude. On verra ainsi une scene ou policiers de Dublin, cow-boys et indiens se battent les uns contre les autres, tandis que d'autres cow-boys courent la campagne en compagnie de fees et de demons de la mythologie irlandaise. Ayant lu ce roman, James Joyce a dit de Flann O'Brien: Cet homme a le genie comique. Comme les romans de Joyce d'ailleurs, At Swim-Two-Birds est aussi un livre tres novateur, qui a eu une influence considerable sur l'imaginaire irlandais. Meconnu en France, il est en Irlande aussi celebre et peut-etre aussi aime qu'Ulysse. Ecrit dans cet anglo-irish qui a ete le triomphe des Irlandais utilisant l'anglais que les Anglais leur avait impose pour se creer une nouvelle litterature, il fait ici l'objet d'une traduction nouvelle, et d'une presentation par Patrick Hersant. Patrick Hersant a traduit un grand nombre de livres de l'anglais, dont, aux Belles Lettres, le Mille et un navires de Francis Scott Fitzgerald. C'est un veritable ecrivain, dote d'un authentique esprit comique. Un livre vraiment drole James Joyce At Swim-to-birds reste, pour moi, un des meilleurs livres du siecle... dans la lignee d'Ulysse et de Tristram Shandy Graham Greene Flann O'Brien est incontestablement un auteur majeur. Comme Joyce, O'Brien se lance a l'assaut de votre cerveau arme de mots, de style, de magie, de folie et fait preuve d'une invention sans limite Anthony Burgess

Flann O'Brien (1911-1966) est considere, avec Joyce et Beckett, comme l'un des grands Irlandais de la litterature mondiale. Ses romans, du Troisieme policier a L'Archiviste de Dublin, en passant par At-Swim-To-Birds, lui valent l'admiration de Dylan Thomas, John Updike, ou encore Nicholson Baker et Edna O'Brien, parmi d'autres. Mais ce sont ses chroniques, publiees de 1940 a sa mort dans l'Irish Times sous le pseudonyme de Myles na gCopaleen, qui lui valurent celle de ses contemporains. Au fil de ces trente annees de chroniques, Flann O'Brien s'est penche sur toutes les grandes questions qui agitent l'humanite: l'art, la litterature, la mort, mais aussi les usages possibles du ventriloquisme, les raseurs, l'art de passer pour intelligent ou de detamiser la farine. Bourru, bougon, atrabilaire et surtout malpensant, Flann O'Brien denonce avec jubilation les ridicules tant de la bonne societe que du bon peuple d'Irlande . A la fois drole et cruel, O'Brien versus Myles affiche le rejet des conventions de son siecle et revele tout l'art quotidien d'un satiriste hors pair, d'un illusionniste delirant a l'humour aiguise, autrement dit the best of Myles .

A feast of a book. The Independent