A timeless study of a man who revolutionized the literary landscape.

James Joyce (1882–1941) is hailed as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. Rejecting his homeland and its religion as a young man, Joyce went on to reinvent the Dublin of his youth in his fiction. His masterpiece, Ulysses—once banned in Britain and the United States—redefined the modern novel and has become a canonical classic. Finnegans Wake, written as Joyce’s eyesight deteriorated, cemented his legacy as one of the founding figures of modernist literature.

In a revised edition of this lucid and compelling biography, containing a new foreword from the author, crucial events in Joyce’s life, from his self-imposed exile to his creative triumphs, are explored vividly. Ian Pindar reveals how Joyce’s work carefully blends the abstract and the mundane, capturing the great human comedy of which we are all part.