(1882–1941)
an Irish author who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. He left Ireland in 1904 and spent the rest of his life abroad, in Trieste, Zürich and Paris. His novels Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939) introduced new ways of writing fiction, particularly the ‘stream of consciousness’ style, which presents a person’s rapidly changing thoughts. He also made use of invented words and unusual sentence structures. His work was not well understood during his life and Ulysses was banned in Britain and the US until 1936 because it was considered offensive. Earlier books by him include Dubliners (1914) (a collection of short stories) and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914–15), which reflects Joyce’s own experiences of growing up in Dublin, and the play Exiles (1918).