Tristram Shandy

This ribald, high-spirited novel, whose author was described by Diderot as 'the Rabelais of the English', provoked literary scandal when it was first published in 1760. With its ingenious structure and its exuberant pretence of being an autobiography, Tristram Shandy fascinates like a verbal game of chess. Milan Kundera has said that it is the eighteenth-century novel he loves best.