Synopsis
Originally submitted and rejected for publication in 1940, this brilliant absurdist novel by Brian O'Nolan (writing as Flann O'Brien) was not published until 1967, a year after the author's death. Parts of it appeared in his 1964 novel, THE DALKEY ARCHIVE. The nameless, one-legged narrator and another man, John Divney, plot to kill their neighbor Philip Mathers and steal his moneybox. The narrator intends to use his share of the ill-gotten gains to fund research into the work of de Selby, a philosopher who rejects most of the basic principles of existence (life, darkness, etc.) as illusion. Tasked with collecting the moneybox after the murder, the narrator embarks upon a bizarre, hallucinatory journey through an afterlife populated with two policemen obsessed with bicycles and their theft.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1999-03-01 | | Series: | John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series |
| Size | | Length: | 200 pages | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.8 in | | Weight: | 10.4 oz |
Publisher's Note
The Third Policeman is Flann O'Brien's 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.
Industry Reviews
"A book about a bicycle. Surely one of the great comic novels of the 20th century. It's by an Irishman, of course."
Salon - Peter Carey (07/12/1999)
"[A] darkly absurd work shot through with manic laughter, and informed throughout by that sinister nonsense which is the true stamp of O'Brien's artistry.,,,[A] comprehensive expression of that Manichaean world view which [was] a main component of Flann O'Brien's aesthetic. It is a sort of comedy, a sort of thriller, a sort of joke philosophical treatise."
New York Review of Books - John Banville (11/18/1999)
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