Book Provides Lost Fans With Plot Theory "Ammunition"  3/11/06

Fans of Lost hoping to decipher the meaning behind the show are being encouraged to read a novel, first published in 1940, which inspired the writing of the TV drama.

Surreal book The Third Policeman, by Flann O'Brien, sold 10,000 copies in the US after it made a brief appearance in an episode of the show recently aired on America television.

Co-writer Craig Wright tells the Chicago Tribune, "This book was chosen for a reason. Whoever goes out and buys the book will have a lot more ammunition as they theorize about the show.

"They will have a lot more to speculate about."

The Third Policeman's prologue suggests the island Lost's air crash characters inhabit is an hallucination.

The book begins: "Human existence being an hallucination... it ill becomes any man of sense to be concerned at the illusory approach of the supreme hallucination known as death."