Eimar O'Duffy

This comical science fiction fantasy, written in the 1930s, offers a historical critique of politics, economics, social pretension, and globalization. The novel is the third in the Cuanduine trilogy, a series of science fiction works that challenge the "Procrustean remedy"--the adaptation of society to the paid employment system--and cite modern capitalism as the root of society's problems. In this volume Cuanduine, the mythical hero of this trilogy who is brought to earth to right the wrongs perpetrated by capitalists, turns his fury against the media, mainstream economists, and ordinary people who seek narrow, short-term, self-interested ends.

Originally published in 1926, King Goshawk and the Birds is the first installment of O’Duffy’s Cuanduine trilogy, which also included The Spacious Adventures of the Man in the Street (1928) and Asses in Clover (1933), all set to be published by Dalkey Archive in the near future. Set in a future world devastated by the development of capitalism, King Goshawk concerns the eponymous tyrant’s attempt to buy all of the wildflowers and songbirds in Ireland, and the attempt by a Dublin philosopher as well as a number of mythical heroes of Irish tradition to stop him.