Flann O’Brien and the European Avant-Garde, 1934-1945: Dublin’s Dadaist

Crossing the boundaries of a single-author study, this book rediscovers Flann O’Brien’s attempt to synthesise a commercially successful Irish literary project from international avant-garde influences.

Placing the early work of Flann O’Brien - just as experimental and yet aimed explicitly at achieving a wide readership - into a global context, this book uses the new evidence of his collaborations to refigure O’Brien as a networked writer who drew on experimental techniques to produce new categories of writing with the aim of rethinking Irish culture and delivering a commercially successful project. It reveals a network of Irish cultural production around him that draws on diverse sources such as English comic magazines, Dadaist photomontage, Expressionism and Central European theatre, as well as on well-known writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Franz Kafka.

By rethinking Flann O’Brien in this way, the book also rewrites the cultural history of Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s.

Tobias W. Harris is Associate Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK.