With a new Introduction by Cedric Watts, Research Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Laurence Sterne's
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'.