In store now! A Shorter Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, Anthony Burgess (Editor)

Finnegans Wake is Joyce’s great comic novel about a Dublin innkeeper, H.C. Earwicket (HCE, or “Here Comes Everybody”), whose wife, Anna Livia Plurabelle, is also a river. In just one night he dreams the entire history of man’s place in the world with its perpetual cycle of rising and falling and rising again.

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A Shorter Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, Anthony Burgess (Editor)

Paperback £10.99

The novel is without any doubt one of the twentieth century’s most monumental achievements, but having said that, it is also one of the century’s most challenging books to read- and most importantly- to understand.

Enter stage left. Anthony Burgess, a completely devoted Joyce scholar with a mission to make Finnigan accessible to a wide audience, which would then, he hoped, be able to tackle the novel using the tools he had supplied. The result, first published in 1965, was A Shorter Finnegans Wake, roughly a third of the length of the original novel, with a brilliant introduction that most definitely handed the reader the keys to unlock Joyce’s masterpiece. In addition to the abridgement, Burgess provided short but illuminating commentaries throughout the text.

Finally, Burgess reminds us that Joyce’s great work is “one of few books in world that can make us lough aloud on nearly every page,” and is one that puts forward “a view of humanity as realistic as that of Dante, and quite as optimistic”

Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.

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