The Various Lives of Marcus Igoe by Brinsley MacNamara

“Published in 1929, this comic novel is set in MacNamara’s fictional Irish village of Garradrimna. The plot follows Igoe, the town cobbler, as he relates the events of his life. A good addition to literature collections.”

—Library Journal

“Irish man of letters MacNamara is perhaps best known for his brilliantly perceptive satire, The Valley of the Squinting Windows (1918), but it is this, his sixth novel, published in 1929, which is considered his most innovative work…. It is a fascinating example of early-twentieth century Irish writing, in which tradition follow writers such as Flann O’Brien and John Banville.”

—Publishers Weekly

“[This is] easily the author’s best book…. The novel is a fabulist satire, or a satirical – fantasy. The novel has variously been characterized as a meditation on the autonomy of literature, on the immortality of the artist, existence, non-being, and reality.”

—The Irish Times

1995, 288 pages
ISBN 978-0-8023-1304-1 $13.95