About the Author

Flann O'Brien was one of several pseudonyms of Brian O'Nolan (1911-1966), who is considered along with James Joyce and Samuel Beckett to be one of the greatest Irish writers of the twentieth century. His novels include At Swim-Two-Birds, The Poor Mouth, The Third Policeman, The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive.

Maebh Long is a Senior Lecturer in the English Programme at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She has published widely on Brian O'Nolan/Flann O'Brien, and is the author of Assembling Flann O'Brien (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), an award-winning monograph of theoretical engagements with O'Nolan's works.

Reviews

"O'Brien was one of the comic geniuses of the 20th century . . . "
*Boston Globe*

"O'Brien is always worth investigation by the converted, the curious, and the endemically lighthearted."
*Kirkus Reviews*

"When the layers are peeled away, they reveal an imaginative comic genius with a genuine gift for language."
*Publishers Weekly*

“'Tis the odd joke of modern Irish literature—of the three novelists in its holy trinity, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien, the easiest and most accessible of the lot is O'Brien. . . . Flann O'Brien was too much his own man, Ireland's man, to speak in any but his own tongue.”
*Washington Post*

"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."
*New York Times*

“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*

"A real writer, with the true comic spirit."
*James Joyce*