La boca pobre

The poor mouth, the second novel written by Flann O'Brien, is the funniest of the works of this wonderful Irish author. It was published in Gaelic in 1941 and in 1964 it was translated into English. For this edition the text has been translated from the Gaelic. The novel is a critique of the situation in which the Irish rural population found themselves in the mid-20th century. It deals with identity, real or fake, and the title of La boca pobre alludes to a Gaelic expression that refers to putting the ink on poverty and the hardships that are suffered, in order to obtain compassion and pity, and the benefits that these report. Here everyone seeks to be what they are not. Satire was always a very present element in the Gaelic tradition, from medieval poetry to the splendid eighteenth-century Court of Midnight. Flann O'Brien knew this and contributed to the genre with this wonderful novel.