The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

Description

G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece, edited and with an introduction by Matthew Beaumont Can you trust yourself when you don't know who you are? In a park in London, secret policeman Gabriel Syme strikes up a conversation with an anarchist. Sworn to do his duty, Syme uses his new acquaintance to go undercover in Europe's Central Anarchist Council and infiltrate their deadly mission, even managing to have himself voted to the position of 'Thursday'. When Syme discovers another undercover policeman on the Council, however, he starts to question his role in their operations. And as a desperate chase across Europe begins, his confusion grows, as well as his confidence in his ability to outwit his enemies. But he has still to face the greatest terror that the Council has- a man named Sunday, whose true nature is worse than Syme could ever have imagined ...

G.K. Chesteron was born in 1874. He attended the Slade School of Art, where he appears to have suffered a nervous breakdown, before turning his hand to journalism. A prolific writer throughout his life, his best-known books include The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1922) and the Father Brown stories. Chesterton converted to Roman Catholicism in 1922 and died in 1938. Matthew Beaumont is Senior Lecturer in English at University College London. His most recent book is Utopia Ltd.- Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England, 1870-1900 (2009).

"A powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each of us encounters in his single-handed struggle with the universe." --C. S. Lewis