Finnegans Wake (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

enhances the reader's textual awareness...The captivating, accessible and rich introduction by Finn Fordham enthuses first-time readers (James Joyce Broadsheet, Dirk Van Hulle)

The editors have provided a lucid introduction and a chapter-by-chapter outline which gives one at last a vague hold on what's going on, but it's not overburdened with notes, which frees one to stop worrying and just enjoy the surrealism and exuberance of Joyce's language. (Independent on Sunday)

'And low, stole o'er the stillness the heartbeats of sleep'

In Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin, an innkeeper and his family are sleeping. Around them and their dreams there swirls a vortex of world history, of ambition and failure, desire and transgression, pride and shame, rivalry and conflict, gossip and mystery. This is a book that reinvents the novel and plays fantastic games with the language to tell the story of one man's fall and resurrection; in the intimate drama of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker and his wife Anna Livia, the character of Ireland itself takes form. Joyce called time and the river and the mountains the real heroes of his book, and its organic structure and extraordinary musicality embody his vision. It is both an outrageous epic and a wildly inventive comedy that rewards its readers with never-ending layers of meaning.

In the introduction to this newly set edition, which faithfully maintains the original page layout, Finn Fordham guides the reader through the novel's complexity, and suggests a range of ways into the book.
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