Thriller · Humor
The Man Who Was Thursday
A poet-policeman goes undercover in a council of anarchists, each named after a day of the week.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A council of seven days
In a London suburb, at an evening party in a garden, two poets argue: one says the artist is an anarchist, the other that order is more poetic than chaos. The second, Gabriel Syme, turns out to be a policeman, a member of a secret squad of philosophical detectives. The first takes him to an underground meeting of anarchists, and through bluff and luck Syme is elected to their supreme council, whose seven members are named after the days of the week. Syme becomes Thursday. Their president, Sunday, is an enormous man who seems to know everything. G. K. Chesterton published the novel in 1908, with the subtitle A Nightmare.
Why it works for learners
It’s short, funny and full of chases: across London, over the Channel to France, through a forest and a seaside town. Each chapter has a clear goal and a surprise, and the surprises are part of the comedy. The vocabulary of secrecy and pursuit (spy, code, mask, police, bomb, follow, escape) runs throughout.
But it’s also a book of ideas, and it grows stranger as it goes. Much of its pleasure lies in Chesterton’s paradoxes and the dreamlike final chapters, which need a good command of the language to enjoy.
Which level to start at
B2 and above. A B1 edition makes the plot clear and keeps the comedy of the chases, but the book’s real character comes out at C1, where Chesterton’s style is kept. When a paradox seems to contradict itself, the sentence translation into your own language can show you which way it turns.
Read next
- The Innocence of Father Brown, Chesterton’s priest-detective
- The Thirty-Nine Steps, a more down-to-earth spy chase
- Through the Looking-Glass, another dream with its own strict logic