Second printing, includes 28 pages of corrections. Dust jacket is price-clipped, some insect damage.

Finnegans Wake is the final and most experimental novel by Irish writer James Joyce, published in May 1939. Written over a period of 17 years under the working title "Work in Progress", it is widely regarded as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language.

The novel is written in a highly idiosyncratic, "polyglot" dream-language composed of multi-lingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and complex stream-of-consciousness associations. It is designed to mimic the logic and experience of a night time dream.

Heavily inspired by the philosopher Giambattista Vico's theory of history, the book is completely circular. The very last sentence fragments off mid-phrase ("A way a lone a last a loved a long the") and loops directly back into the opening words of the book ("riverrun, past Eve and Adam's...").

R2,000