No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien
| By: | Anthony Cronin, Kevin Barry |
| Publisher: | New Island Books |
| Published: | April 2019 |
| Pages: | 404 |
| Categories: | Biography |
| Available as: | Hardback, Paperback, Ebook |
| On sale at: |
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First published in 1989 No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien was the first full-length biography of Flann O'Brien. Rich in background, anecdote and social history, it is an extraordinary portrait of a writer and his times, perceptive, sympathetic and authoritative. Flann O'Brien (aka Brian O'Nolan) was born in Tyrone in 1911 and worked as a civil servant for many years. He also developed an alter ego, Myles na Gopaleen, whose saitrical column in the Irish Times soon acquired legendary status.
At Swim-Two-Birds, his first novel, appeared in 1939 and was praised by James Joyce, Graham Greene, Dylan Thomas and others. His second novel, The Third Policeman, failed to find a publisher at the time but has since been acknowledged as one of the most important novels to come out of Ireland in the twentieth century. With a foreword by acclaimed author Kevin Barry and striking redesign, No Laughing Matter is an undisputed classic of Irish literary biography.
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