The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

Gabriel Syme is a poet recruited into a secret anti-anarchist police force, and his first assignment goes alarmingly well: he talks his way into the Central Anarchist Council of Europe, seven men code-named for the days of the week. Syme becomes Thursday. Presiding over them all is Sunday, a figure so enormous and so serenely unnerving that the plot against civilization starts to feel like the least of Syme's problems.

What begins as a spy thriller accelerates into chases across London and the French countryside, duels, disguises, and a series of unmaskings in which nothing and no one stays what it seemed. Chesterton subtitled it "A Nightmare," and it keeps a dream's logic (funny, sinister, and strangely joyful) right up to a final revelation readers have argued about for over a century.

At roughly 59,200 words, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare runs about 6½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

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