Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake (1939) is James Joyce's last and most radical work, composed over seventeen years. Written in a unique language of portmanteau words and multilingual puns, it follows the Earwicker family through a single night's dream that encompasses all of human history. The book's circular structure — its last sentence loops back to its first — embodies Joyce's vision of history as an eternal recurrence. Bewildering, comic, and profoundly musical, it remains literature's most ambitious experiment.