Tristram Shandy/Laurence Sterne

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'.