Rent The Third Policeman (John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series)

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.

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