In A Star Called Henry, we meet a young Henry Smart on the dangerous streets of early 1900s Dublin, on his way to becoming an Irish Republican legend. Oh, Play That Thing turns Smart loose on 1920s America, where he tries to escape a history of murder and mayhem, and befriends up-and-coming musician Louis Armstrong in vividly evoked Jazz Age Chicago. The Dead Republic, the moving finale to the trilogy, finds Smart back in Ireland, where worlds collide and he is thrust back into the life he thought he'd left behind decades before. In three brilliant novels, Roddy Doyle has told the whole history of Ireland in the twentieth century. And, in the person of his Henry Smart, he has created one of the great characters of modern fiction.
