At Swim-Two-Birds

At Swim-Two-Birds is narrated by an idle, Guinness-fond Dublin university student who is writing a novel. His novel centers on Dermot Trellis, an author who is himself writing a novel and who keeps his characters captive in a hotel. When Trellis sleeps, his characters take advantage of the lapse to lead their own lives, mingling with figures pulled from Irish myth, cowboy fiction, and pub legend. They eventually conspire to write Trellis into a story of their own and put him on trial for his crimes against them. The book stacks three levels of fiction on top of one another and lets them collide in a comic riot of voices and registers.