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Content snapshot
Flag an inaccuracy →What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.
Violence
None
No violence
Language
Barely any
Period bawdiness; adult language in an 18th-century register
Sexual Content
Some
Significant sexual innuendo and bawdy humor throughout; the 'nose' as extended allegory; frank but not explicit
Substance Use
Barely any
Period drinking in a gentlemanly context
Emotional Intensity
Some
The meta-fictional games that make reading itself the subject; the novel's cheerful refusal of all narrative expectations
What this book is about
Tristram Shandy sets out to write his autobiography but is so perpetually diverted by digressions, associations, and the impossibility of capturing life in linear narrative that by the end of nine volumes he still hasn't reached his birth. Laurence Sterne's 1759–1767 novel is one of the founding works of postmodern fiction—centuries before postmodernism—with blank pages, marbled pages, typographical experiments, direct addresses to the reader, and bawdy humor throughout. A novel that treats reading and writing as its real subjects.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
Sustained bawdy humor and sexual innuendo throughout
The postmodern structure deliberately frustrates narrative expectations
Reader Verification
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