Ulysses

The greatest novel of the twentieth century. The most banned. The most admired. The most unread.

James Joyce's Ulysses is a book that needs no introduction—and yet, for many readers, it remains a mountain too steep to climb. It is the story of a single day: June 16, 1904, in Dublin. It follows three characters: Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser; Stephen Dedalus, the young intellectual from Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; and Molly Bloom, Leopold's wife, whose famous final soliloquy is one of the longest sentences in English literature.

The novel parallels Homer's Odyssey. Leopold Bloom is Ulysses, wandering through the streets of Dublin. Stephen Dedalus is Telemachus, searching for a father. Molly Bloom is Penelope, waiting at home. But the epic has been turned inside out. Instead of monsters and gods, Bloom encounters anti-Semitic barflies, nationalist zealots, a funeral, a childbirth, a brothel, and a biscuit tin of stale cocoa. The adventures are internal. The quest is for connection, kindness, and the simple dignity of being a decent man in an indecent world.

Joyce's prose shifts styles with every chapter: from the mock-heroic to the sentimental, from the journalistic to the hallucinatory, from the catechism of the "Ithaca" episode to the unpunctuated torrent of Molly's monologue. The book is difficult. It is also funny, tender, filthy, and sublime.

This is Joyce at his most audacious and compassionate: a novel about the ordinary, the everyday, the overlooked, and the claim that a single day in the life of a nobody contains everything worth knowing about the human condition.

• First published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in Paris

• Banned in the United States and United Kingdom for obscenity; the landmark 1933 trial United States v. One Book Called Ulysses overturned the ban

• Named by the Modern Library as the greatest English-language novel of the twentieth century

Available in multiple formats:

• Paperback & Hardcover: Beautifully designed print editions presenting the complete, unabridged text made to last.

• Ebook: DRM-free EPUB compatible with Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and all major e-readers.

• Audiobook: Professionally narrated, complete and unabridged, available on all major audiobook platforms.

A beautifully crafted edition for your shelf, your device, or your ears, or the perfect gift for anyone who knows that every day is an odyssey, and that the greatest adventures are the ones that happen in the mind.

About the Author

James Joyce (1882–1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Born in Dublin, he was the eldest of ten surviving children. He left Ireland in 1904 with his future wife, Nora Barnacle, and spent most of his adult life in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. His major works include the short story collection Dubliners(1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939). Ulysses was the subject of three obscenity trials in the United States before the landmark 1933 ruling by Judge John M. Woolsey, who declared it a work of art and lifted the ban. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941. June 16 is celebrated by Joyce fans around the world as Bloomsday, an annual commemoration of the novel's events.