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Book Cover for: No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien, Anthony Cronin

No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien

Anthony Cronin

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.

Book Details

  • Publisher: New Island Books
  • Publish Date: Apr 26th, 2019
  • Pages: 392
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.30in - 1.30in - 0.97lb
  • EAN: 9781848407145
  • Categories: Literary FiguresEurope - Ireland

About the Author

Anthony Cronin was a poet, novelist and critic. Among his prose works are The Last Modernist (1996), a biography of Samuel Beckett, Dead as Doornails and The Life of Riley.