‘Short, crisp and enjoyable’
——The Guardian

‘Pindar has skilfully made the process of understanding the complex relationship between Joyce’s life and work ‘fun again’.’
——Times Literary Supplement

‘Pindar manages gracefully to pack a wealth of information into this brief study.’
——Irish Independent

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 fiction. His masterpiece, Ulysses – once banned in Britain and the United States – redefined the modern novel and has become a canonical classic, while Finnegans Wake, written as his eyesight deteriorated, cemented Joyce’s legacy as one of the founding figures of modernist literature.

In this lucid and compelling biography, Ian Pindar vividly explores crucial events in Joyce’s life, from his self-imposed exile to his creative triumphs. Revealing how Joyce’s work carefully blends the abstract and the mundane, Joyce is a timeless study of a man who revolutionised the literary landscape and captured the great human comedy of which we are all part.

Ian Pindar is a writer and editor. He wrote the Guardian ‘Diary’, ‘Critical Eye’ and ‘Déjà vu’ columns for many years and reviewed for the Times Literary Supplement. He was an editor at The Harvill Press and before that at Weidenfeld & Nicolson. He co-translated The Three Ecologies by the French philosopher Félix Guattari. His poetry collections, Emporium and Constellations, are published by Carcanet, and he was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem). Emporium was shortlisted for The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection. His poems have appeared in The Forward Book of Poetry, The London Magazine, Magma, PN Review, Poetry Review and the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in Oxfordshire.

Terry Eagleton is a renowned literary theorist and critic. Eagleton has published over forty books, including Literary Theory: An Introduction. He is Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University and lives in Northern Ireland.