The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare 1908 is the most renowned and critically acclaimed novel by the prolific G. K. Chesterton. Equal parts mystery, suspense story, allegory, and farce, it is considered a classic of the spy genre while at the same time almost constitutes a genre of its own. Each rereading of The Man Who Was Thursday
The hero, Gabriel Syme, is Chestertons ideal of the virtuous Common Man. He must infiltrate and try to thwart an anarchist cell, whose heart is the mysterious and ambiguous Sunday, man whose powers seem almost godlike. Symes mission lead him through the back ways of Victorian London and on a wild Chase through the French country-side, and adventure at once madcap, surreal, and cosmically important. More than just charming tale of Dickensian characters and a mysterious man who was supposed to be "Thursday," The Man Who Was Thursday asks the dark questions: Will the human race survive? It is a question as relevant at the start of the twenty-first century as it was at the beginning of the twentieth.