"Anyone interested in Joyce's politics, a much-contested field, must read this book. It is authoritative, original, and richly argumentative, steering a complex course between conflicting opinions. All aspects of the topic are considered, and many errors in previous accounts are corrected. Indispensable." --Zachary Leader, author of Ellmann's Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and Its Maker "Frank Callanan was gifted with a lawyer's forensic skill and a historian's eye for the disregarded detail. Both abilities illuminate this magnum opus, which establishes the brilliance, originality, and coherence of James Joyce's political and historical views, and reveals what they tell us not only about his life and work but also Irish history and politics. Drawing on immense knowledge of the political and social background against which Joyce wrote, this biography redefines and interrogates his idiosyncratic but consistent attitudes to nationalism, socialism, and religion, with a subtlety and capaciousness worthy of its subject." --R.

F. Foster, author of W. B. Yeats: A Life "This is an extraordinarily rich account of the political life of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Deploying his unmatched mastery of historical and biographical detail, Callanan's book brilliantly illuminates the context in which Joyce's masterpieces took shape along with the controversies that haunted his imagination." --Richard Bourke, University of Cambridge "An electrifying and wonderfully immersive political biography. Frank Callanan's scrupulous narrative reveals how Joyce's modernism and politics were inherently connected and scotches the myth of a writer who became increasingly disengaged. This detailed and often surprising investigation tracks how Joyce disdained the sentimental cult of Charles Stewart Parnell while remaining wholly convinced of his revolutionary legacy.

" --Anne Fogarty, professor emerita of James Joyce Studies, University College Dublin.