James Joyce made two recordings of his own writing, and both survive. In 1924 he read the Aeolus episode from Ulysses in a Paris studio, where the first take failed and had to be redone. In 1929 C. K. Ogden, the inventor of Basic English, recorded Joyce reading the Anna Livia Plurabelle section of Finnegans Wake in Cambridge, using better equipment than the Paris studio had. Joyce's voice is slightly sing-song and declamatory, and he reads the dense wordplay of the Wake with an Irish washerwoman's accent. Sylvia Beach, his publisher friend, said Joyce had the text printed in huge type because his eyesight was failing.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.