Ulysses

An exhilarating literary classic, and an unforgettable read.

All the action of Ulysses by James Joyce takes place in and immediately around Dublin on a single day (June 16, 1904). The three central characters, Stephen Dedalus (the hero of Joyce's earlier Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man); Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising canvasser; and his wife, Molly are intended to be modern-day counterparts of Telemachus, Ulysses (Odysseus), and Penelope, respectively. The events of the novel loosely parallel the major events in Odysseus's journey home after the Trojan War in addition to events and themes of the early 20th-century context of modernism, Dublin, and Ireland's relationship to Britain. The novel is highly suggestive and also imitates the styles of different periods of English literature.