As 'Ulysses' charted the wanderings of Leopold Bloom over the course of twenty-four hours in Dublin, so 'Finnegans Wake' encapsulates the whole of mankind's history in the dreams of one man, H.C. Earwicker, during a single, restless night. At once baffling and revealing, rich with mythology and symbolism, 'Finnegans Wake' is a great rushing stream of consciousness, an unrepeatable performance of linguistic virtuosity that, more than any novel this century, stretches the boundaries of the imagination tothe absolute limit.