Acclaimed as one of the funniest and most assured Irish novels of the last decade, An Evening of Long Goodbyes is the story of Dubliner Charles Hythloday and the heroic squandering of the family inheritance. Featuring drinking, greyhound racing, vanishing furniture, more drinking, old movies, assorted Dublin lowlife, eviction and the perils of community theatre, Paul Murray's debut novel is a tour de force of comedic writing wrapped in an honest-to-goodness tale of a man — and a family — living in denial…

Claude is a Frenchman who lives in Dublin. His birthplace is famed as the city of lovers, but so far love has always eluded him. Instead his life revolves around the investment bank where he works. And then one day he realizes he is being followed around, by a pale, scrawny man. The man's name is Paul Murray. Paul claims to want to write a novel about Claude and Claude's heart sings. Finally, a chance to escape the drudgery of his everyday office life, to be involved in writing, in art! But Paul himself seems more interested in where the bank keeps its money than in Claude-and soon Claude realizes that Paul is not all he appears to be…