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by: G.K. Chesterton
Amazon.com's Price: $8.95 Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780375757914
ISBN: 0375757910
Label: Modern Library
Manufacturer: Modern Library
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: October 09, 2001
Publisher: Modern Library
Release Date: October 09, 2001
Sales Rank: 17797
Studio: Modern Library
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
In an article published the day before his death, G.K. Chesterton called The Man Who Was Thursday 'a very melodramatic sort of moonshine.' Set in a phantasmagoric London where policemen are poets and anarchists camouflage themselves as, well, anarchists, his 1907 novel offers up one highly colored enigma after another. If that weren't enough, the author also throws in an elephant chase and a hot-air-balloon pursuit in which the pursuers suffer from 'the persistent refusal of the balloon to follow the roads, and the still more persistent refusal of the cabmen to follow the balloon.'
But Chesterton is also concerned with more serious questions of honor and truth (and less serious ones, perhaps, of duels and dualism). Our hero is Gabriel Syme, a policeman who cannot reveal that his fellow poet Lucian Gregory is an anarchist. In Chesterton's agile, antic hands, Syme is the virtual embodiment of paradox: He came of a family of cranks, in which all the oldest people had all the newest notions. One of his uncles always walked about without a hat, and another had made an unsuccessful attempt to walk about with a hat and nothing else. His father cultivated art and self-realization; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinthe and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.... Being surrounded with every conceivable kind of revolt from infancy, Gabriel had to revolt into something, so he revolted into the only thing left--sanity. Elected undercover into the Central European Council of anarchists, Syme must avoid discovery and save the world from any bombings in the offing. As Thursday (each anarchist takes the name of a weekday--the only quotidian thing about this fantasia) does his best to undo his new colleagues, the masks multiply. The question then becomes: Do they reveal or conceal? And who, not to mention what, can be believed? As The Man Who Was Thursday proceeds, it becomes a hilarious numbers game with a more serious undertone--what happens if most members of the council actually turn out to be on the side of right? Chesterton's tour de force is a thriller that is best read slowly, so as to savor his highly anarchic take on anarchy. --Kerry Fried
Product Description:
G. K. Chesterton's surreal masterpiece is a psychological thriller that centers on seven anarchists in turn-of-the-century London who call themselves by the names of the days of the week. Chesterton explores the meanings of their disguised identities in what is a fascinating mystery and, ultimately, a spellbinding allegory. As Jonathan Lethem remarks in his Introduction, The real characters are the ideas. Chesterton's nutty agenda is really quite simple: to expose moral relativism and parlor nihilism for the devils he believes them to be. This wouldn't be interesting at all, though, if he didn't also show such passion for giving the devil his due. He animates the forces of chaos and anarchy with every ounce of imaginative verve and rhetorical force in his body.
Download Description:
Widely considered as Chesterton's masterpiece, The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) defies classification. Subtitled 'A nightmare' by Chesterton, on one level it is a fast-moving and surreal detective story. Drawing on contemporary fears of anarchist conspiracies and bomb outrages, The Man Who Was Thursday is firmly rooted in its time and place - turn-of-the-century London - but it also defies temporal boundaries. Police Detective Syme finds himself drawn into a world that seems to have gone beyond humanity when he is elected 'Thursday', one of the members of the Central European Council of seven monarchs. Dreamlike, prophetic, and frequently funny, the novel attacks contemporary pessimism and, through a bizarre series of pursuits and unmaskings, returns Syme - and us - to earth more aware of its beauty, promise, and creative potential.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Chesterton hits close to home with this thriller
I wasn't sure what to expect when I was given this book by a friend - all I knew is that Chesterton is an amazing writer and I was not disappointed in the least after reading The Man Who was Thursday. The story is intriguing and moves the reader along page by page until one is almost finished with the book before even knowing it. The characters are interesting - and as one person commented about the book - the real characters are the ideas, not the individuals themselves. Chesterton is a master ... Read More
Rating:  - The perfect spy novel
Simply the best spy novel I ever read. Furthermore is a christian allegory of the contradictions of human nature viewed from a sinful perspective, which leads us to the marvelous mistery of the good and the evil, through the eyes of an undercover agent.
Rating: - Yes, I Think It IS a Nightmare
I am a Chesterton fan and have read several of his books, mostly non-fiction. "The Man ...." is in my reading, definitely a nightmare and very well crafted as one. The progress of the story line has the kind of time compression and startling disconnections which are so true to a dreamm sequence. There is an exceptional, though not universally appealing, literary quality present in this book for Chesterton to be able to even pull it off, much less to hold the reader's attention through out.
... Read More
Rating: - Hardly a Nightmare, but a Dream Reflecting Reality
This book is simply brilliant, an enjoyable and fascinating read. Chesterton possessed such a magnificent command of the English language, of irony and description and engrossing writing, that I would highly recommend the book simply to allow a reader to marvel at Chesterton's writings.
Yet the book is so much more than simply an enjoyable read. Under the guise of a fantastic and occasionally bizarre tale, Chesterton probes the depths of the human soul and the human condition.
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Rating: - Chesterton's vivid imagination and an allegory to ruin your life...
First I'll say that this book certainly lived up to the reputation Chesterton holds as a literary genius. His subtle wit at times had me audibly laughing out loud. The descriptions he uses paint very vivid images in your mind and all the while he manages to hold an incredible level of suspense throughout the novel.
At times a chase scene will digress into an in-depth philosophical conversation among the main characters. And yet this never feels out of place or forced. I had previously only ... Read More
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