Irish · 1911–1966
Flann O'Brien demolished the conventions of the novel while pretending to observe them. The Irish writer—born Brian O'Nolan, also published as Myles na gCopaleen—created fictions that folded in on themselves with delirious comic effect. "At Swim-Two-Birds" offers a novel about a man writing a novel whose characters rebel against their author. His newspaper column for the Irish Times deployed the same anarchic wit daily for decades. O'Brien worked as a civil servant while producing some of the twentieth century's most inventive comic fiction, largely unrecognized until after his death.