The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Aug 16, 2025 12:03 AM

Author:Laurence Sterne

Sterne's utterly original novel - the meandering, maddening 'autobiography' of one of literature's oldest comic characters.

Doomed to become the ‘sport of fortune’ by an interruption at the crucial moment of conception, Tristram Shandy’s life lurches from one mishap to another: his nose crushed by the doctor’s forceps during birth, christened with the wrong name, an unfortunate incident involving a slamming sash window… Discover the anti-autobiography of the hilarious Tristram Shandy.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TOM MCCARTHY

‘Tristram Shandy is one of the funniest novels in the English language. It's also one of the first great experimental literary works’ Independent

Reviews

Tristram Shandy is one of the funniest novels in the English language. It's also one of the first great experimental literary works

—— Independent

A mad, recursive, literary joke

—— Daily Telegraph

An extraordinary comic tour de force

—— Guardian

The ultimate novel about writing a novel

—— Sunday Telegraph

An amazing book, seeming like a modern experimental novel but written in the 18th century by an Anglican clergyman. You can dip in and out of it with constant pleasure.

—— Bamber Gasgoigne , Daily Express

Has inspired and provoked writers as various as Dickens, Joyce and Salman Rushdie

—— Observer

Tristram Shandy’s open, digressive form offers both an alternative to the inevitable reductions of plot and a foil to the tyranny of the will to system.

—— New Statesman

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