One of Ireland's best current novelists provides a thumbnail sketch of Ireland's greatest writer. A passionate and sensuous portrait, James Joyce is a return to the land of politics, history, saints, and scholars that shaped the creator of the 20th century's groundbreaking novel, Ulysses. O'Brien traces Joyce's early days as a rambunctious young Jesuit student; his falling in love with a tall, red-haired Galway girl named Nora Barnacle on Bloomsday; and his exile to Trieste where he found success, love, and finally, despair. Joyce's raucous life as well as thoughtful commentary on his major writings is presented without the academic accoutrements that have made other Joyce biographies so difficult to read. O'Brien captures with simplicity the brilliance and complexity of this great master.