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Book Cover for: An Béal Bocht, Myles Na Gcopaleen

An Béal Bocht

Myles Na Gcopaleen

Widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish-language novels of the 20th century, An Béal Bocht is a classic satire in Irish by one of the century's great writers, Myles na gCopaleen/Flann O'Brien/Brian O'Nolan. This extremely funny book, with its rain-sodden peasants of Corca Dorcha who combine pretensions to proficiency in English with true caint na ndaoine in the hope of impressing the insatiable Irish-language enthusiasts, was the proof that the Irish of the Revival had come of age.


It earned Flann O'Brien the accolade bestowed upon him by Austin Clarke: 'our Gaelic satirist' and is still a useful corrective against the native tendency to take things too seriously. As its subtitle An Milleánach indicates, it satirises Tomás Ó Criomhthain's famous Blasket autobiography An t-Oileánach as well as other Gaeltacht works like Caisleáin Óir by Donegal writer Séamus Ó Grianna (Máire).




Book Details

  • Publisher: Mercier Press
  • Publish Date: Jul 6th, 2018
  • Pages: 130
  • Language: English
  • Dimensions: 7.81in - 5.06in - 0.28in - 0.29lb
  • EAN: 9781781176436
  • Categories: ClassicsSatireCultural Heritage

About the Author

Na Gcopaleen, Myles: - Myles na gCopaleen (aka Flann O'Brien) was born Brian O'Nolan in Strabane in 1911. He began to write as a student at University College Dublin. Thereafter he worked as a civil servant. He wrote a regular tri-weekly column called 'The Cruiskeen Lawn' for The Irish Times for twenty-five years from the early 1940s. In this he made his name as a satirist, writing originally in Irish, then more and more in English. His claim to literary fame rests mainly on two post-modernist works in English, At-Swim-Two-Birds (1939) and the posthumous The Third Policeman (1967).
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