Ulysses

James Joyce

Sep 2000 · Naxos AudioBooks · Narrated by Jim Norton

About this audiobook

Ulysses is one of the greatest literary works in the English language. In his remarkable tour de force, Joyce catalogues one dayÊÐ June 16 1904ÊÐ in immense detail as Leopold Bloom wanders through Dublin, talking, observing, musingÊÐ and always remembering Molly, his passionate, wayward wife. Set in the shadow of HomerÕs Odyssey, internal thoughtsÊÐ JoyceÕs famous stream of consciousnessÊÐ give physical reality extra colour and perspective. Though Ulysses is widely regarded as a ÔdifficultÕ novel, this fresh and lively reading shows its comic genius as well as its great moments of poignancy, making it more accessible than ever before. The recorded text is taken from the 1937 Bodley Head edition.

About the author

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, into a large Catholic family. Joyce was a very good pupil, studying poetics, languages, and philosophy at Clongowes Wood College, Belvedere College, and the Royal University in Dublin. Joyce taught school in Dalkey, Ireland, before marrying in 1904. Joyce lived in Zurich and Triest, teaching languages at Berlitz schools, and then settled in Paris in 1920 where he figured prominently in the Parisian literary scene, as witnessed by Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. Joyce's collection of fine short stories, Dubliners, was published in 1914, to critical acclaim. Joyce's major works include A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, and Stephen Hero. Ulysses, published in 1922, is considered one of the greatest English novels of the 20th century. The book simply chronicles one day in the fictional life of Leopold Bloom, but it introduces stream of consciousness as a literary method and broaches many subjects controversial to its day. As avant-garde as Ulysses was, Finnegans Wake is even more challenging to the reader as an important modernist work. Joyce died just two years after its publication, in 1941.