Barry Lyndon
1844
Thackeray's masterpiece of social satire follows Redmond Barry, an Irish rogue whose talent for fabrication and calculated charm propels him from provincial gentry to the heights of English society, and then unceremoniously back down. Narrated by Barry himself with triumphant self-regard, the novel watches in horrified amusement as its protagonist cheats, duels, and marries his way toward respectability, only to discover that the game was always rigged against him. Thackeray constructs a brilliantly unreliable narrator: Barry presents himself as a gentleman wronged by fortune, while the reader perceives a cad of staggering optimism and modest principles. The result is both hilarious and melancholy, a portrait of social ambition that anticipates the hollow triumphs of modern life with unsettling precision. Set against the backdrop of 18th-century Europe at war and at play, Barry Lyndon moves from Irish country houses to London gaming dens to Prussian battlefields with the ease of a born storyteller who happens to be writing about a born liar.
