James Joyce: A Passionate Exile is a revealing new account of the life, times and writings of the twentieth century"s most distinguished novelist. Combining words with an extraordinary collection of contemporary photographs and other images, it depicts his family"s fall from riches to rags and his experience of growing up in late nineteenth century Dublin. Author and Joyce scholar John McCourt also examines Joyce"s relationship with his life-long partner, Nora Barnacle, and casts new light on their 40-year voluntary exile in Europe, first in the cosmopolitan Adriatic port of Trieste, then in lively wartime Zurich and finally in Paris, the artistic centre of the world in the 1920s and 30s. Exile from Ireland was a necessary condition for Joyce to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race in his magnificent short story collection Dubliners, in his intense bildungsroman A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and his modern epic Ulysses.