Dalkey Archive - (Irish Literature) by Flann O'Brien (Paperback)

About the Book

"Wit, humor, satire, the exact fall of a Dublin syllable, the ear for the local turn, the flight of fancy that can spin into a Dublin joke or a Limerick limerick all these are his." The New York Times

Book Synopsis

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."

Review Quotes

The Dalkey Archiv

Flann O'Brien is unquestionably a major author. His work, like that of Joyce, is so layered as to be almost Dante-esque . . . Joyce and Flann O'Brien assault your brain with words, style, magic, madness, and unlimited invention. --Anthony Burgess

Dalkey Archive [Press] has made one reader very happy and likely will intoxicate many others with Flann O'Brien's fine brew of malt, salt, air, heady ideas and rich, ripe prose.

It is increasingly clear that O'Brien is Ireland's finest novelist after Joyce.

The undoubted humor of [The Dalkey Archive] derives as much from Mr. O'Brien's facile use of language as from the play of his fertile imagination . . . not to be missed.

The Dalkey Archive is witty, sly, outrageous, and the characters remind one at times of Nabokov or De Vries.