The amusing story of De Selby, a mad genius who has invented a substance which can stop time, age whiskey, and destroy the world (or, at least, he believes he can do this, and convinces at least one other person as well). He is also in communication with St. Augustine and other theological personages.

His adversary, Mick, attempts to stop him, having enlisted the aid of a policeman who believes that humans can exchange molecules (and personalities) with inanimate objects, as well as James Joyce, who is exploiting the assumption that he is dead by distancing himself from his writings (he considers Ulysses, forged by Sylvia Beach, to be a smutty book) and who pursues a quiet existence as a barman in a Irish resort town.

Entertaining in its own right, parts of The Dalkey Archive with its generous swipes at science and theology, were apparently cannibalized from an earlier novel, The Third Policeman, which I haven't read. I will defer judgement on their relative merits to the Irish reviewer below. 6/98

A fairly poor later work from the master. It raises a few smiles, but lacks the hilarity, precision and carefully orchestrated anarchy that characterise At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. The "atomic theory" material from the latter is reworked here as the "mollycule thoery" to less hilarious effect. ( )