The Informer

Set in the poverty and paranoia of Dublin during Ireland’s revolutionary years, Liam O’Flaherty’s best-known novel follows Gypo Nolan, a hulking, slow-thinking man who betrays his friend and former comrade to the police for twenty pounds. The reward gives him a night of drinking and false glory, but the organization he once served begins hunting the traitor in its ranks, and Gypo, too dull to plan and too frightened to run, blunders toward his own destruction. O’Flaherty writes the manhunt as a study of guilt, fear, and a mind coming apart. Published in 1925 and later filmed by John Ford, it remains a hard, unsettling portrait of a man and a city under strain. The full novel is free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.