Finnegans Wake (Penguin Modern Classics) [Paperback]

'Listening to Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan is a lot easier than trying to read the book.' --The Guardian

It's estimated that a complete recording of this eccentric masterpiece would run to about 20 CDs, but Naxos has made an attractive abridgement in four, recorded with wit and clarity by Jim Norton and Marcella Riordan. I've never met anyone who has actually managed to read every page of this extraordinary book...and there can be little doubt that Joyce intended his work to be listened to as much as read. This brilliant recording is the perfect short cut for slackers, poseurs and insomniacs. --Robert McCrum, The Observer --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Follows a man's thoughts and dreams during a single night. It is also a book that participates in the re-reading of Irish history that was part of the revival of the early 20th century. The author also wrote "Ulysses", "Dubliners" and "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man".

Published in 1939, 'Finnegans Wake' is Joyce's final masterpiece. Seventeen years in the writing, it represents the culmination of his experiments with literary form and language.

As 'Ulysses' charted the wanderings of Leopold Bloom over the course of twenty-four hours in Dublin, so 'Finnegans Wake' encapsulates the whole of mankind's history in the dreams of one man, H.C. Earwicker, during a single, restless night. At once baffling and revealing, rich with mythology and symbolism, 'Finnegans Wake' is a great rushing stream of consciousness, an unrepeatable performance of linguistic virtuosity that, more than any novel this century, stretches the boundaries of the imagination to the absolute limit.

“With enormous genius an erudition, Joyce has actually invented a new language in 'Finnegans Wake'.”
STEPHEN SPENDER

“In conception as well as in execution, 'Finnegans Wake' is one of the boldest books ever written. A great work of literature.”
EDMUND WILSON

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the Continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, Ulysees and Finnegans Wake. He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life and was plagued by near blindness and the grief of his daughter's insanity. He died in 1941.