Tristram shandy/laurence sterne

With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.

Laurence Sternes The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is a huge literary paradox, for it is both a novel and an anti-novel.

As a comic novel replete with bawdy humour and generous sentiments, it introduces us to a vivid group of memorable characters, variously eccentric, farcical and endearing.

As an anti-novel, it is a deliberately tantalising and exuberantly egoistic work, ostentatiously digressive, involving the reader in the labyrinthine creation of a purported autobiography.

This mercurial eighteenth-century text thus anticipates modernism and postmodernism.

Vibrant and bizarre, Tristram Shandy provides an unforgettable experience.

We may see why Nietzsche termed Sterne the most liberated spirit of all time.