Tristram Shandy: Laurence Sterne (Everyman's Library CLASSICS)

by Laurence Sterne (Author), Laurence Sterne (Author)

• New

  International Edition
  1991

  $18.15

  A mock autobiography, in which the hero wrestles with the impossibility of explaining anything without explaining everything. In the process he explores every conceivable fictional device in a brilliant display of narrative fireworks.

• Used

  Paperback
  1968

  $16.53

• Used

  Hardcover
  1975

  $5.75

• New

  Paperback
  1996

  $6.96

  With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex. Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel. As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing. As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography. This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism. Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience. We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne 'the most liberated spirit of all time'.