Liam O'Flaherty's novel The Informer (1925) is what the author of this fascinating study calls a "mythogenic text" -- one that lends itself easily to adaptations, recreations and renditions. To date there have been four film versions and at least as many stage versions. As Patrick Sheeran amply demonstrates, the central antagonism between O'Flaherty's Hardman and the Gunman has provided dramatists and filmmakers with a compelling way of staging political conflict -- not only in Ireland but in Weimar Germany and in the inner-city ghettoes of Afro-America as well.

Pat Sheeran is Associate Professor in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway.