At Swim-Two-Birds
First edition cover
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| Author | Flann O'Brien |
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| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Longman Green & Co |
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Publication date
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1939 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 224 pp (UK paperback edition) |
| Followed by | The Third Policeman |
At Swim-Two-Birds is a 1939 novel by Irish writer Brian O'Nolan, writing under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien. It is widely considered to be O'Brien's masterpiece, and one of the most sophisticated examples of metafiction.
The novel's title derives from Snámh dá Én (Middle Ir.: "Swim-Two-Birds"), a ford on the River Shannon, between Clonmacnoise and Shannonbridge, reportedly visited by the legendary King Sweeney, a character in the novel.
The novel was included in TIME magazine's list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. It was also included in a list, published by The Guardian, of the 100 best English-language novels of all time.
At Swim-Two-Birds presents itself as a first-person story by an unnamed Irish student of literature. The student believes that "one beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with", and he accordingly sets three apparently quite separate stories in motion. The first concerns the Pooka MacPhellimey, "a member of the devil class". The second is about a young man named John Furriskey, who turns out to be a fictional character created by another of the student's creations, Dermot Trellis, a cynical writer of Westerns. The third consists of the student's adaptations of Irish legends, mostly concerning Finn Mac Cool and Mad King Sweeney.
In the autobiographical frame story, the student recounts details of his life. He lives with his uncle, who works as a clerk in the Guinness Brewery in Dublin. The uncle is a complacent and self-consciously respectable bachelor who suspects that the student does very little studying. This seems to be the case, as by his own account the student spends more time drinking stout with his college friends, lying in bed and working on his book, than he does going to class.
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