Celebrating 250 years of bookselling in Dublin.
In 1768 John Milliken opened his first bookshop in Skinner’s Row, close to Christchurch.
Towards the end of the century, as the city prospered and expanded, he moved the bookshop to the now fashionable Grafton Street.
In 1844 Hodges Smith & Co. bought the business and around this time Samuel Figgis joined the firm and thus the Hodges Figgis relationship was formed.
Over the years Hodges Figgis has firmly embedded itself in the cultural landscape of the city, forever immortalised in Joyce’s Ulysses.
Now in 2018, continuing this rich literary tradition, we are delighted to present this exclusive edition of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds.
Flann O'Brien's innovative metafictional work, whose unruly characters strike out their own paths in life to the frustration of their author, At Swim-Two-Birds is a brilliant impressionistic jumble of ideas, mythology and nonsense.Flann O'Brien's first novel tells the story of a young, indolent undergraduate, who lives with his curmudgeonly uncle in Dubin and spends far too much time drinking with his friends. When not drunk or in bed he likes to invent wild stories peoples with hilarious and unlikely characters - but somehow his creations won't do what he wants them to.
A dazzling work of farce, satire, folklore and absurdity that gives full rein to its author's dancing intellect and Celtic wit, At Swim-Two-Birds is both a brilliant comic send-up of Irish literature and culture, and a portrayal of Dublin to compare with Joyce's Ulysses.
Brian O Nuallain, (1911-1966), better known by his pseudonym Flann O'Brien, was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, and studied at University College Dublin before joining the Irish Civil Service.
