Finnegans Wake

Published in 1939, this novel follows a Dublin publican, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle, and their sons Shem and Shaun through a night of sleep in which history, myth, and gossip dissolve into multilingual puns. The fall of a man in Phoenix Park, rumours of guilt, and the flow of the Liffey recur as the book's matter. Characters split and recombine; time folds. The last sentence runs into the first, so the text is a loop. It is not a conventional plot novel but a dream-work about family, river, and the rise and fall of cities.

Bound in black cloth blocked with a wrap-around blue and silver picture, with a blue leather title label.