Finnegans Wake

by James Joyce

Overview

Bold, bewildering, and utterly unique, Finnegans Wake is James Joyce's final and most daring work, an experimental tour de force that redefined the possibilities of language, narrative, and meaning.

First published in 1939 after more than seventeen years in the making, this extraordinary novel challenges conventional reading with its dream-like logic, linguistic inventiveness, and mythic scope. Set in a cyclical, shifting dreamscape, Finnegans Wake explores the lives, histories, and fantasies of the Earwicker family, blurring time, identity, and geography in a continuous stream of puns, portmanteau words, and multilingual wordplay. Drawing from mythology, history, philosophy, and popular culture, Joyce crafts a world where every sentence teems with layers of interpretation and every word invites deeper exploration.

Long considered one of the most challenging books ever written, Finnegans Wake remains a cornerstone of modernist literature and a monument to Joyce's genius and ambition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781447470298
Publisher:	Read & Co. Classics
Publication date:	12/18/2012
Pages:	838
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.86(d)

About the Author

James Joyce (1882–1941), an Irish poet and novelist, was one of the most celebrated writers of the twentieth century. His works include Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Date of Birth:

February 2, 1882

Date of Death:

January 13, 1941

Place of Birth:

Dublin, Ireland

Place of Death:

Zurich, Switzerland

Education:

B.A., University College, Dublin, 1902

Website:

http://www.jamesjoyce.ie

What People are Saying About This

Anthony Burgess

The age between the wars comes to an end with Joyce's Finnegans Wake, in which the author's interest in the deeper regions of the human mind leads him to the kingdom of sleep. The book is a dream of world history and it is couched in a new language, a comic mixture of all the tongues of Europe. Fictional experimentation could not well go further. To many readers Finnegans Wake mirrored the European chaos to come, but others saw a secret blueprint for rebuilding a civilization that was on the brink of destroying itself. (Anthony Burgess, from One Man's Chorus)