‘The Man Who Was Thursday’ is a novel by G.K. Chesterton, first published in 1908. The book has been referred to as a metaphysical thriller. It is the story of Gabriel Syme, who is recruited by Scotland Yard as part of an anti-anarchist task force. When he meets Lucian Gregory, a poet and member of a secret society of anarchists, he gains access to the underground movement. The group is led by a central council of seven men, each named for a day of the week. Gabriel convinces the local chapter to elect him to the vacant position of Thursday and he soon discovers that he is not the only one pretending to be something that he is not.

‘The Man Who Was Thursday’ is a wild, mad, hilarious and profoundly moving tale that ultimately defies classification. The novel has been described as one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges.

G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday is a wacky, nightmarish, deliriously well-written adventure story for grownups in which nothing is what it seems and everyone wears a mask, whether figurative or literal. It’s hard to think of a more thrilling book. -Kate Christensen, TIME Magazine’s Summer Reading List 2009.