Description
First published in Paris in 1955, and originally banned in the United States, J. P. Donleavy’s first novel is now recognized the world over as a masterpiece and a modern classic of the highest order. Set in Ireland just after World War II, The Ginger Man is J. P. Donleavy’s wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne’er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. He barely has time for his studies and avoids bill collectors, makes love to almost anything in a skirt, and tries to survive without having to descend into the bottomless pit of steady work. Dangerfield’s appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable–and he satisfies it with endless charm.
Review
“It is one of the books that reveal their quality from the first line. On every page there is that immediacy all good writing has.”
—V. S. Naipaul
“Lusty, violent, wildly funny . . . The Ginger Man is the picaresque novel to stop them all.”
—Dorothy Parker
“Nasty and lyrical, a curse that sounds suspiciously like a prayer, this outlandish hybrid of Irish-American letters is still armed and dangerous after thirty years. Sebastian Dangerfield, the lecherous, treacherous, larcenous, and thoroughly charming Ginger Man, appears to be immortal as well as immoral.”
—Jay McInerney
