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James Joyce: Finnegans Wake
I have read Finnegans Wake but I cannot really say that I would recommend it to anyone. Nominally about a family at war, it is an incredibly complex literary, mythical, historical, etc. conundrum that requires much reading and much study to know what the hell is going on. It is probably the most complex and difficult well-known novel and, in all reality, requires years of study to fully appreciate it. Various of the sites below recommend several guides and I can heartily endorse Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress by Samuel Beckett and other friends of Joyce and Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson’s A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. I would not advise you to read the book without some such guide. And if you believe that reading should be straightforward and without a guide, you may well want to skip this book. BTW, note that the title is Finnegans Wake without the apostrophe.
Publishing history
First published 1939 by Faber and Faber (first complete publication – parts had been previously published)
Other sites
Finnegans Wiki
oyce-again’s wake: an analysis of Finnegans wake
Glosses of Finnegans Wake
How & Why to Read James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
A Finnegans Wake Gaarden (A Catalogue Of Flora In Finnegans Wake)
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Finnegans Wake (lyrics to the song)