'Finn's Hotel' is a serio-comic collection of ten 'epiclets', as Joyce called them. These ten 'little epics' (including a few discovered only in 2004) represent Joyce's creative output after finishing 'Ulysses' and before beginning 'Finnegans Wake'. 'Finn's Hotel' was originally conceived as a series of fables: concise, concentrated pieces of prose fiction centering on epoch-making Irish historic and mythic moments, spanning about 1,500 years. Joyce set all but one of these epiclets aside for sixteen years, until, when struggling to finish 'Finnegans Wake', he returned to some of them for inspiration. The piece he did not leave aside-about the larger than life character HC Earwicker-became the seminal idea for 'Finnegans Wake'. Many of Joyce's heros and heroines, who were previously known to us only in their later, complex reincarnations, made their unvarnished debut in 'Finn's Hotel'. Like his other abandoned and posthumously published works 'Stephen Hero' and 'Giacomo Joyce' (each a stepping-stone for his next work), 'Finn's Hotel' is a work in itself, in addition to being a documentary snapshot of Joyce's ever-expanding creative process and a key to major themes of the notoriously difficult 'Finnegans Wake'.