Saints and Scholars

In 1916, in a remote cottage on the west coast of Ireland, an unlikely collection of fugitives gathers. Ludwig Wittgenstein has run away from Cambridge and English insularity. His traveling companion, Nikolai Bakhtin (brother of the Marxist aesthetician), has been through the gamut of revolutionary sects and is now devoting himself to gluttony. Into their retreat stumble James Connolly, now on the run from the British government, and Leopold Bloom, fleeing Ulysses and his broken marriage. Being men of ideas, they begin to talk. And then, being men of principles, they begin to argue ...“Sheer fun and sadness welling up out of critical intelligence.”—George Steiner, Sunday Times Books of the Year

“Ingenious, erudite and entertaining.”—Times Literary Supplement

“Wonderfully funny ... brilliant.”—Publishers Weekly

“Savagely comic ... Written with real passion.”—Sunday TimesTerry Eagleton is Professor of Cultural Theory and John Rylands Fellow, University of Manchester. His other books include Ideology; The Function of Criticism; Heathcliff and the Great Hunger; Against the Grain; Walter Benjamin; and Criticism and Ideology, all from Verso.