‘Joyce redeems his Dubliners, assures their identity, and makes their social existence appear permanent and immortal, like the streets they walk’ Tom Paulin. Written when he was just twenty-five years old, James Joyce’s Dubliners was his first major work and the book that brought his city to the world for the first time — a feat that, as the Sunday Times has noted, leaves these early stories ‘undimmed in their brilliance’. This Penguin Classics edition includes notes and an introduction by Terence Brown. Rooted in the rich textures of everyday Dublin life, these modernist short stories portray ordinary, often defeated characters with unflinching realism, building a vivid and enduring portrait of a city and its people. The collection ranges from ‘The Sisters’, with its sharp evocation of childhood faith and guilt, through ‘Araby’, a timeless rendering of adolescent yearning, to the magnificent ‘The Dead’, in which Gabriel Conroy is brought by degrees to a painful epiphany about the nature of his own existence. Across the stories, Joyce draws together a memorable cast of Dubliners to explore social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure — weaving from these themes a uniquely compelling vision of human experience. James Joyce (1882–1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin but exiled himself to Paris at twenty in rebellion against his upbringing. Though he returned to Ireland only briefly, Dublin remained the beating heart of his greatest works, including Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. He lived in poverty for much of his life, beset by near blindness and grief over his daughter’s mental illness. If you enjoyed Dubliners, you might like Joyce’s Ulysses, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.
ISBN 13: 9780141182452
Author: James Joyce
