The Irish modernist James Joyce (1882–1941) is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. His life and work are inextricably linked with Zurich. Find out more about Joyce’s time in Zurich.
Leaving Ireland
James Joyce was born in Rathgar, a suburb of Dublin, in 1882. In the summer of 1904, he met his partner, Nora Barnacle. That same fall, the young couple decided to leave Ireland. James was convinced that the colonial, conservatively Catholic city of Dublin was spiritually and politically too narrow for him as an aspiring artist. While Joyce would return for a few short visits – the last of these taking place in 1912 – neither he nor Nora would ever again return to live there.
Nora and James’s life in exile brought them to such different places as Pula (Croatia), Trieste (Austria Hungary, later Italy), Rome, Paris, and Zurich. They had two children, Giorgio and Lucia. Joyce’s works comprise poems, plays, and prose fiction, incl. Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Ulysses (1922).
- Find out more about Joyce’s works.
- Joyce’s works have also been adapted into films, plays, musicals, etc.
- You may also be interested in works of biofiction (i.e. films, novels, etc. inspired by the lives of Joyce and his family).