The Dalkey Archive (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)

Description

From the author of the classic novel 'At-Swim-Two-Birds' comes this ingenious tale which follows the mad and absurd ambitions of a scientist determined to destroy the world. Flann O'Brien's third novel, 'The Dalkey Archive' is a riotous depiction of the extraordinary events surrounding theologian and mad scientist De Selby's attempt to destroy the world by removing all the oxygen from the atmosphere. Only Michael Shaughnessy, 'a lowly civil servant', and James Joyce, alive and well and working as a barman in the nearby seaside resort of Skerries, can stop the inimitable De Selby in his tracks.

Flann O'Brien was one of the many pseudonyms of Brian O'Nolan, author of the classic novel 'At-Swim- Two-Birds' and, under the name Myles na Gopaleen, writer of a celebrated satirical column in the Irish Times which appeared daily for almost thirty years. Highly praised by Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, amongst others, O'Brien is regarded as one of the great comic writers of the twentieth century. He died in 1966.

'Flann O'Brien is inventive, his storytelling is swift and sure, making the eccentric seem natural and the commonplace hilarious.' The Times '"The Dalkey Archive" is worth every penny for the hilarious fourth chapter alone in which De Selby and his two drinking companions in aqualungs converse with St Augustine in an underwater cave off Dalkey seafront. A wicked yet affectionate satire on Irishry.' City Limits 'O'Brien's dialogue is keen and inspired, the prose lucid and sharp with a blend of lunatic improbable and seamless quotidian.' Irish Times