Exiles
By (Author) James Joyce
Penguin Books Ltd
Penguin Classics
9th September 2025
5th June 2025
United Kingdom
General
Non Fiction
822.912
Paperback
160
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 15mm
200g
James Joyce's only surviving play in a new edition with an introduction and annotations by Andrew Gibson. After ten long years spent away from Dublin, Richard, Bertha and their young illegitimate son Archie are back home. Despite expectations of comfort and domesticity, the couple's return to the place where they first met triggers an existential questioning, an anxiousness which is exacerbated by meetings with old friends and lovers. James Joyce's only surviving play, Exiles builds upon one of his most famous short stories, 'The Dead', to provide a profound exploration of jealousy, doubt and the complexity of human desire.
A neglected landmark of modern theatre that explores the byzantine complexities of marriage with the honesty of genius * Guardian *
James Joyce was born in Dublin on 2 February 1882, the eldest of ten children in a family which, after brief prosperity, collapsed into poverty. He was none the less educated at the best Jesuit schools and then at University College, Dublin, and displayed considerable academic and literary ability. Although he spent most of his adult life outside Ireland, Joyce's psychological and fictional universe is firmly rooted in his native Dublin, the city which provides the settings and much of the subject matter for all his fiction. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses (1922) and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake (1939), as well as the short story collection Dubliners (1914) and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). James Joyce died in Z rich, on 13 January 1941.