Dubliners

'There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.' From a child coming to terms with the death of a priest to a young woman torn between leading an uneventful life in Dublin and fleeing Ireland with her lover, these fifteen stories bring to life the day-to-day existence of ordinary Dubliners in the early years of the twentieth century. With brutal realism, Joyce lays bare the struggles and desires of the Irish middle classes in a compelling and unique exploration of human experience. Completed in 1905, Dubliners was published nine years later, thanks to the author's persistence. It was the first of Joyce's novels to portray his home city, and is a seminal work by one of the most influential authors of the modern era.