O’BRIEN, Flann. The Third Policeman (First edition)

O’BRIEN, Flann. The Third Policeman. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967. First edition, second impression. Octavo. pp. 200. Original brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt, in the original pictorial dust jacket. pp. 200. Very good copy in a very good dust jacket. Jacket lightly rubbed and a little creased to the upper panel, with some age-toning to the spine and extremities. Internally clean and bright.

One of the masterpieces of twentieth-century Irish fiction and now widely regarded as Flann O’Brien’s greatest achievement. Written in 1939–40 but rejected for publication during the author’s lifetime, The Third Policeman finally appeared in 1967, a year after O’Brien’s death. Its publication revealed a work of extraordinary originality, combining black comedy, philosophical speculation, surrealism and detective fiction in a manner entirely unique to Irish literature.

The novel follows an unnamed narrator into a bizarre and nightmarish landscape inhabited by eccentric policemen, impossible theories and metaphysical absurdities. Central to the work is the pseudo-scientific philosophy of the fictional scholar De Selby, whose eccentric theories on time, existence and reality became among the most memorable inventions in modern fiction.

Often compared with the writings of Kafka and Beckett, the novel has grown steadily in reputation and is now considered a cornerstone of modern Irish literature. The first edition remains highly collectible, particularly in the scarce dust jacket.

An important copy of one of the most influential Irish novels of the twentieth century.

[L3 7F]