Ulysses

Product Description

A modernist novel of supreme stylistic innovation, James Joyce`s ” Ulysses” is the towering achievement of twentieth century literature. This ” Penguin Modern Classics” edition

Includes:: an introduction by Declan Kiberd. For Joyce, literature `is the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man`. Written between 1914 & 1921, ” Ulysses” has survived bowdlerization, legal action & bitter controversy. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan & Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, & a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism & vulgarity to splendid extremes. An undisputed modernist classic, its ceaseless verbal inventiveness & astonishingly wide-ranging allusions confirm its standing as an imperishable monument to the human condition. Declan Kilberd says in his introduction that ” Ulysses” is `an endlessly open book of utopian epiphanies. It holds a mirror up to the colonial capital that was Dublin on 16 June 1904, but it also offers redemptive glimpses of a future world which might be made over in terms of those utopian moments.` This edition is the standard Random House/ Bodley Head text that first appeared in 1960. James Joyce (1882-1941), the eldest of ten children, was born in Dublin, but exiled himself to Paris at twenty as a rebellion against his upbringing. He only returned to Ireland briefly from the continent but Dublin was at heart of his greatest works, ” Ulysses” & ” Finnegans Wake”. He lived in poverty until the last ten years of his life & was plagued by near blindness & the grief of his daughter`s mental illness. If you enjoyed ” Ulysses”, you might enjoy Virginia Woolf`s ” Mrs Dalloway”, also available in Penguin Classics. ” Everybody knows now that ” Ulysses” is the greatest novel of the twentieth century”. (Anthony Burgess, ” Observer”).