In the closing moments of his final almost impenetrable work,Joyce asks a question that many of his readers over the years must have thought about him, ‘Is there one who understands me?’ (FW 627:15). There will always be a doubt about Finnegans Wake, but to some extent the complaint also resonates against his work as a whole. For Joyce, both as a man and as a writer, is a puzzle, and he has been so for what is now several generations of readers round the world. Joyce half-knew he would be a puzzle and to some extent he was responsible for his fate, for, as he once remarked about Ulysses, ‘I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of insuring one’s immortality’ (Ellmann, 1982, 521). The enigma, though, prompted worldwide interest, for as John Banville noted, writing in the New York Times on the centenary of Bloomsday in June 2004, ‘Ulysses remains one of the most talked about and least read works of world literature.’ Banville’s conjunction is instructive. Joyce, who knew how to insure and ensure his immortality, is the most talked about and least read modern author, as enigmatic today as he was when he first came to the world’s notice in the years around the Great War.