Ulysses

James Joyce, 1922

Irish writers Modernist novels

A Dublin day is rendered through conversations, ordinary routines and the shifting activity of thought.

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Length: 18 chapters
Reading time: About 18 hr 32 min
Words: 264,614

About the book

The novel opens with Buck Mulligan shaving at a tower while Stephen Dedalus observes and responds. It soon moves into a classroom, where an ordinary question about history becomes entangled with Stephen's inward associations and private unease.

Joyce makes the movement of language part of the experience rather than a transparent route to events. Spoken exchanges stand beside thoughts that may leap between memory, allusion and immediate sensation. The local detail of a single day invites close attention, while the changing narrative methods repeatedly alter how readers encounter that detail.

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Irish writers Modernist novels

This edition

Text from Standard Ebooks, who proofread and typeset it and dedicate their edition to the public domain. James Joyce died more than 70 years ago, so the work is out of copyright in the UK.