Man Who Was Thursday

The Man Who Was Thursday is a novel by G.K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book has been referred to as a metaphysical thriller. It is the story of Gabriel Syme, who is recruited by Scotland Yard as part of an anti-anarchist task force. When he meets Lucian Gregory, a poet and member of a secret society of anarchists, he gains access to the underground movement. The group is led by a central council of seven men, each named for a day of the week. Gabriel convinces the local chapter to elect him to the vacant position of "e;Thursday"e; and he soon discovers that he is not the only one pretending to be something that he is not.'The Man Who Was Thursday' is a wild, mad, hilarious and profoundly moving tale that ultimately defies classification. The novel has been described as "e;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."e; "e;G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday is a wacky, nightmarish, deliriously well-written adventure story for grownups in which nothing is what it seems and everyone wears a mask, whether figurative or literal. It's hard to think of a more thrilling book."e;-Kate Christensen, TIME Magazine's Summer Reading List 2009.