Finnegans Wake

James Joyce · 1882–1941 · Ireland

Why it matters

Seventeen years in the making, Joyce's final book dissolves English into a river of puns, portmanteaus, and multilingual dream-language circling a sleeping Dublin publican. Where Ulysses stretched the novel, this abandons it: language itself becomes the only subject.

At a glance

Written in an invented multilingual dream-language that abandons conventional syntax and narrative almost entirely.