An indolent college student creates a chaotic fictional world in this classic of Irish literature: "A marvel of imagination, language, and humor" (New Republic).

In this comic masterpiece, our unnamed narrator-a student at University College, Dublin, who spends more time drinking and working on his novel than attending classes-creates a character, a pub owner named Trellis, who himself is devoted mainly to writing and sleeping. Soon Trellis is collaborating with an author of cowboy romances, and from there unspools a brilliantly unpredictable adventure that James Joyce himself called "a really funny book."

"'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." -The Washington Post

"As with Scott Fitzgerald, there is a brilliant ease in [O'Brien's] prose, a poignant grace glimmering off every page." -John Updike

"One of the best books of our century." -Graham Greene