“Pindar has skillfully made the process of understanding the complex relationship between Joyce’s life and work ‘funagain.’”—The Times Literary Supplement This acclaimed biography, with an introduction by Terry Eagleton, tells the story of James Joyce rejecting his country and his religion, but going on to carefully recreate the Dublin of his youth in his fiction.

This is one title in a series of short, illustrated biographies. They tell the stories of those who have shaped our present and our past, from Beethoven to Dietrich, from Einstein to Churchill. George Orwell (1903-1949) wrote seminal reportage on the conditions of the poor — such as Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier — and was one of the first critics to write seriously about popular culture. During his last years he turned to allegory and fantasy to produce Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, the two books that were to make him world famous. Politically provocative, after his death he became an icon both for the left and the right at the cost of obscuring the realities of his achievements.