A lazy and rarely sober Dublin student spends his days lying in bed, bickering with his miserly uncle, and — writing a novel. Whose protagonist, a second-rate writer who has not been inclined to get out of bed for over twenty years, reads only books with green covers and — of course, writes a novel. Such a bad one that the characters begin to take revenge and — write their own novel, whose hero will be the author who invented them!

The proto-postmodernist novel full of references to medieval Irish literature, 'At Swim-Two-Birds' (1939) is the debut of the author of The Third Policeman, The Dalkey Archive, and The Hard Life — a hilarious masterpiece whose stylistic exuberance was admired by James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Before you is a new translation of this monument of Irish literature with detailed linguistic and cultural commentary.