A BRITISH newspaper has come under fire after listing novels by Irish authors James Joyce, John Banville and Flann O'Brien under a list of the 20 best British novels of all time.
The Daily Telegraph has since amended the list online to include “…and Irish”.
The list included Joyce's 1922 masterpiece Ulysses, Flann O'Brien's 1939 surrealistic landmark At Swim-Two-Birds, and Banville's 2005 novel The Sea, alongside works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf.
Ulysses is described as: "A day in the life of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, as they criss-cross Dublin on June 4, 1904. Every word is pregnant with meaning, every character’s thought conjured with precision, yet it is brilliantly, consistently, laugh-outloud funny."
Meanwhile Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds is praised as "A book within a book within a book, a satirical evocation of 1930s Ireland, in which the characters write about one another, and these various fictional figments gang up on the notional author".
Banville's The Sea is "A masterful exploration of memory, and of loss, Banville’s Booker-winning novel focuses on an art historian reaching back to the seaside years of his childhood."
'sake>>> People are losing the rag over three Irish books included in a “Best British Novels” list (via @dailyedge) http://t.co/k1LSbTgZDW
— Susan Daly (@BiddyEarly) April 16, 2014
The @Telegraph has changed its headline on THAT article to "20 Best British and Irish novels of all time". Nice save. http://t.co/avtf0v6INh
— Christine Bohan (@ChristineBohan) April 15, 2014
