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Flann O'Brien

Flann O'Brien is the pseudonym of Brian Ó Nualláin, who was born in 1911. After a brilliant student career at University College, Dublin, he did linguistic research in Germany and then joined the Irish civil service. He seems to have been greatly influcend by James Joyce, a fellow countryman, as can be traced in the experimental blend of satire, fantasy and farce in At Swim-Two-Birds. His other books and plays include An Béal Bocht, a work written in Irish, The Third Policeman (1940), Faustus Kelly (1943), The Hard Life (1960), and The Dalkey Archive, which was produced on the Dublin stage in 1965. As 'Myles na Gopaleen' he was a well-known satirical columnist for the Irish Times. A legendary figure amongst Irish writers, he lived with his wife in Dublin until his death in 1966.

He has been called 'a wonderfully witty writer'. Reviewing O'Brien's work in The New Yorker one critic wrote: 'His puppetlike figures do not suffer as individuals in any ordinary sense; they suffer for everyone in some general amusement park of the soul while confronting their unexpected fates. In O'Brien's Hell, guilt is a moral implication, not a matter of psychological anguish, and intimidation is the major terror, not humiliation. O'Brien mines and transforms...[his work] is as strangely emotionally affecting as it is funny.'