Explanation

James Joyce's first published book, which he wrote when he was still in his twenties, Dubliners is far removed from the bold experimentalism of his later work, but is essential for understanding the author's development as a writer, and endures as a masterly example of the short-story form.Although ranging considerably in tone, mood and milieu, the fifteen short stories included in this collection all centre around the city of Dublin and its inhabitants at the beginning of the twentieth-century. From the unsettling adventure of two truant schoolboys to the crafty schemes of two con-men, from a young woman's refusal to abandon Ireland and elope with a sailor to a man's moment of clarity during an annual dance party, these stories offer a moving portrait of an entire world and era which has all but disappeared.

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quotes (6)
Writer

James Joyce

Language

English

ISBN

9781847496317

Number of pages

384

Publisher

Alma Books Ltd

Category

Dubliners - James Joyce

One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.
My body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
Love between man and man is impossible because there must not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is impossible because there must be sexual intercourse.
Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.
She dealt with moral problems the way a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had made up her mind.
He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet's soul. Melancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it was a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems perhaps men would listen.