Finnegans Wake

In Finnegans Wake, which ostensibly describes a single night through the consciousness of a Dublin publican, James Joyce took his approach to literary modernism into new territories of experimentation and stream-of-consciousness, eschewing conventional syntax and punctuation and writing in a language of neologisms, puns and portmanteaux. While the result is puzzling and avant-garde, it is also brimming with humour and humanity and has been proclaimed by many critics as Joyce’s masterpiece.This edition, published to coincide with the eightieth anniversary of the first publication in 1939, fully incorporates Joyce’s manuscript amendments and includes a critical introduction by Dr Sam Slote of Trinity College Dublin.

“Reading Finnegans Wake offers a pleasure that derives from its curious mixture of lyricism, humour, and the sense it offers of decoding a diabolic conundrum.”

-- John Lanchester Literary Review

Born in Dublin, James Joyce (1882–1941) spent most of his life abroad, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. His writings, however, mainly centre on Dublin – most famously Ulysses, Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He pioneered and perfected avant-garde prose techniques that saw him rise to the rank of one of Europe’s foremost Modernists.

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