Sterne's utterly original novel—the meandering, maddening "autobiography" of one of literature's oldest comic characters, with an introduction by Tom McCarthy Doomed to become the "sport of fortune" by an interruption at the crucial moment of conception, Tristram Shandy’s life lurches from one mishap to another: his nose crushed by the doctor's forceps during birth, christened with the wrong name, an unfortunate incident involving a slamming sash window. Groundbreaking, subversive, and still controversial, this novel has inspired, enraged, and perplexed writers and readers for centuries. Discover the antiautobiography of the hilarious and impossibly long-winded Tristram Shandy.