Synopsis
Gabriel Syme, a poet and member of the Philosophical Policemen, must combat the Supreme Council of Seven, a group of anarchists each of whom is named for a day of the week.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1986-07-01 |
| Size | | Length: | 120 pages | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.5 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 5.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
Widely considered as Chesterton's masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) defies classification. Subtitled 'A nightmare' by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective story. Drawing on contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb outrages, The Man Who Was Thursday is firmly rooted in its time and place - turn-of-the-century London - but it also defies temporal boundaries. Police Detective Syme finds himself drawn into a world that seems to have gone beyond humanity when he is elected 'Thursday', one of the members of the Central European Council of seven monarchs. Dreamlike, prophetic, and frequently funny, the novel attacks contemporary pessimism and, through a bizarre series of pursuits and unmaskings, returns Syme - and us - to earth more aware of its beauty, promise, and creative potential.
Witty, fast-paced novel about a club of anarchists in turn-of-the-century London. Brilliant social, religious, philosophical speculations.
Industry Reviews
"Of supposedly serious contemporary writers, Gilbert Keith Chesterton was the first to make a strong and genuine impression on me....Even now I see something romantic, almost heroic, about Chesterton, while deploring what in those days I knew nothing of, his self-indulgent polemical writing and the whimsical playing with paradoxes so common in his later fiction....I think it was The Man Who Was Thursday that started me off....I only know that, after a surfeit of supposedly realistic accounts of the workings of espoinage organizations...I long for The Last Cursade and Gabriel Syme with his cloak and sword-stick, and wish that there were a few more books like this."
New York Times Book Review - Kingsley Amis (10/13/1968)
"'The Man Who Was Thursday' is not quite a political bad dream, nor a metaphysical thriller, nor a cosmic joke in the form of a spy novel, but it has something of all three...It remains the most thrilling book I have ever read."
Kingsley Amis
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