Books with title The Man Who Was Thursday

A member of Scotland Yard’s secret anti-anarchist police corps, Gabriel Syme infiltrates the local European anarchist council only to discover that the group is not what it presents itself to be. Acting as Thursday, one of the elite central council, Syme has access to the innermost secrets and goals of the organization, and, as he races to stop the president, Sunday, from unleashing anarchy in Europe, discovers to his surprise that he is not alone in his mission.HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Mr. Chesterton is such a past-master in sophistries and casuistry, such a juggler of paradoxes, such an adept in the arts whereby the brilliant and quick-witted pull the wool over the eyes of their less gifted brethren, that he can give full and serious credibility to his tale of the astounding adventures of the detective who was admitted into the innermost circle of anarchists. It is the poetic anarchist, with hair like a Madonna's and the face of a prize-fighter, who tries (unsuccessfully) to become Thursday.

All that G. K. Chesterton’s critics and comrades labeled him - devotional, impious, confounding, intelligent, humorous, bombastic - he wove into The Man Who Was Thursday. This page-turner sends characters bobbing around a delightfully confusing plot of mythic proportions. There are so many twists and turns that soon you’ll be tangled in a story that you cannot put down...even if you’re not entirely sure why! // The Man Who Was Thursday begins when two poets meet. Gabriel Syme is a poet of law. Lucian Gregory is a poetic anarchist. As the poets protest their respective philosophies, they strike a challenge. In the ruckus that ensues the Central European Council of Anarchists elects Syme to the post of Thursday, one of their seven chief council positions. Undercover. On the run. Syme meets Sunday, the head of the council, a man so outrageously mysterious that his antics confound both the law-abiding and the anarchist. Who is lawful? Who is immoral? Such questions are strangely unanswerable in the presence of Sunday. He is wholly other. He is above the timeless questions of humanity and also somehow behind them. // G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was born in London. He matured into one of the great journalists, philosophers, novelists, and personalities of the twentieth century. Chesterton offered inspiration to many others, including his fellow Brit C. S. Lewis. His much-loved works include The Everlasting Man, Saint Francis of Assisi, Orthodoxy, and the Father Brown series of mystery novels.

Often referred to as a metaphysical thriller, G.K. Chesterton’s brilliant 1908 novella The Man Who Was Thursday – A Nightmare is a tour-de-force of suspense-writing.Newly recruited Scotland Yard detective Gabriel Syme infiltrates a dangerous underworld anarchist group with the help of a poet he befriends, named Lucian Gregory. The taut adventure that ensues is part spy narrative, part dystopian novel and part Christian allegory. Chesterton’s unconventional masterpiece has been described as "one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges."“As The Man Who Was Thursday proceeds, it becomes a hilarious numbers game with a more serious undertone. Chesterton's thriller is best read slowly, so as to savor his highly anarchic take on anarchy.” - Kerry Fried."A powerful picture of the loneliness and bewilderment which each of us encounters in his single-handed struggle with the universe."- C. S. Lewis.*Includes image gallery.

G.K. Chesterton, also commonly referred to as the prince of paradox, was a legendary British writer in the early twentieth century. Chesterton was a very prolific author and his writing is distinguished due to its sharp wit. Chesterton's books cover a wide arrange of topics but his most famous works centered around religious topics and the short stories on the priest-detective Father Brown. The Man Who Was Thursday, published in 1907, is considered by many to be Chesterton's greatest novel. This thriller is set in Edwardian England and tells the story of a secret anarchist council that consists of seven men, each of which use a different day of the week as a cover.

“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front--” --- G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday The Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare G. K. CHESTERTON (1874 - 1936) In a surreal turn-of-the-century London, Gabriel Syme, a poet, is recruited to a secret anti-anarchist taskforce at Scotland Yard. Lucian Gregory, an anarchist poet, is the only poet in Saffron Park, until he loses his temper in an argument over the purpose of poetry with Gabriel Syme, who takes the opposite view. After some time, the frustrated Gregory finds Syme and leads him to a local anarchist meeting-place to prove that he is a true anarchist. Instead of the anarchist Gregory getting elected, the officer Syme uses his wits and is elected as the local representative to the worldwide Central Council of Anarchists. The Council consisting of seven men, each using the name of a day of the week as a code name; Syme is given the name of Thursday...

2011 Reprint of 1908 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare" is a novel by G. K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book is sometimes referred to as a metaphysical thriller. Although it deals with anarchists, the novel is not an exploration or rebuttal of anarchist thought; Chesterton's ad hoc construction of "Philosophical Anarchism" is distinguished from ordinary anarchism and is referred to several times not so much as a rebellion against government but as a rebellion against God. The novel has been described as "one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges.

Can you trust yourself when you don't know who you are? Syme uses his new acquaintance to go undercover in Europe's Central Anarchist Council and infiltrate their deadly mission, even managing to have himself voted to the position of 'Thursday'. In a park in London, secret policeman Gabriel Syme strikes up a conversation with an anarchist. Sworn to do his duty, when Syme discovers another undercover policeman on the Council, however, he starts to question his role in their operations. And as a desperate chase across Europe begins, his confusion grows, as well as his confidence in his ability to outwit his enemies. But he has still to face the greatest terror that the Council has - its leader: a man named Sunday, whose true nature is worse than Syme could ever have imagined...

Customer Reviews Of THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY...Wonderful. Chesterton's prose is dazzling. His use of color and imagery is fresh and lively. The pace is almost frenetic. There is nothing musty about this novel, so give it a try. "Keep in mind, though, it's not a "straight" novel--more of an allegory. But that will only disappoint people obsessed with realism.It seems he only wrote four or five novels. Pity.""Superb stuff. I suspect that I didn't understand much of the deeper meaning but I'm sure it has one. Its a good, rather odd yarn just the same"This is a comment GKC made regarding Thursday:"...The point is that it described, first a band of the last champions of order fighting against what appeared to be a world of anarchy, and then the discovery that the mysterious master both of the anarchy and the order was the same sort of elemental elf who had appeared to be rather too like a pantomime ogre. This line of logic, or lunacy, led many to infer that this equivocal being was meant for a serious description of the Deity; and my work even enjoyed a temporary respect among those who like the Deity to be so described.But this error was entirely due to the fact that they had read the book but had not read the title page. In my case, it is true, it was a question of a subtitle rather than a title. The book was called The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. It was not intended to describe the real world as it was, or as I thought it was, even when my thoughts were considerably less settled than they are now. It was intended to describe the world of wild doubt and despair which the pessimists were generally describing at that date; with just a gleam of hope in some double meaning of the doubt, which even the pessimists felt in some fitful fashion."

— A Classic — Includes Active Table of Contents — Includes Religious IllustrationsIt is very difficult to classify The Man Who Was Thursday. It is possible to say that it is a gripping adventure story of murderous criminals and brilliant policemen; but it was to be expected that the author of the Father Brown stories should tell a detective story like no-one else. On this level, therefore, The Man Who Was Thursday succeeds superbly; if nothing else, it is a magnificent tour-de-force of suspense-writing.Aeterna Press