Laurence Sterne’s singular novelistic achievement, …Tristram Shandy, is one of the landmarks of English literature. Published in instalments 1759-67 it is evidence of Sterne’s genius for treating the book form as something to be fooled around with amusingly (a full page of black ink for a death; rows of asterisks and dashes; blank pages and lines). The author is no more serious in his treatment of the subject matter suggested by the title: Tristram himself is not born until the fourth volume and by the end of the novel is not out of his infancy. There is no plot to speak of but rather a series of events and thoughts narrated by Tristram and concerning his often hilariously absurd family and acquaintances. His thought processes direct the novel or rather misdirect them through anecdote after digression after sidetrack. Tristram is a shrewd and amusing guide. His constant fear that he will not complete his life story because every day he only writes only a fraction of a previous day’s activities is well-founded and also typical of the self-consciousness that defines this book as a precursor of the postmodern. In amongst the potted histories of Tristram’s conception, philosophic musings and travels are a host of amusing characters such as Uncle Toby (with his testing groin wound), the hopeless Dr Slop, and Walter Shandy who is constructing the Tristapaedia to educate his son. It is near irrelevant whether the reader understands Tristram’s every witticism or even follows the story such as it exists. The fun of the novel - and it is most certainly intended to be a bit of fun and a "A COCK and a BULL" story - is to be found in its disconnected episodes and the sheer wildness of the whole. The book may be considered the originator of the ‘stream-of-consciousness’ form and had Sterne not written it, it is hard to believe that Joyce would have given us Ulysses - Shandy’s natural successor.