Dubliners

by James Joyce

Dubliners, a collection of short stories by James Joyce, was first published in 1914. They were written between 1904 and 1908, although many of them were revised several times by the author. It is often said that this set of short stories captures the spirit of Dublin better than any other book as they offer an insight into the lives of ordinary citizens including teachers, tradesmen, and waiters, young and old alike. The stories cover all aspects of inner city Dublin life at that time and range from the comic to the tragic.

298 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 19, 2022

About the author

James Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and a pivotal figure in 20th-century modernist literature, renowned for his highly experimental approach to language and narrative structure, particularly his pioneering mastery and popularization of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Born into a middle-class Catholic family in the Rathgar suburb of Dublin in 1882, Joyce spent the majority of his adult life in self-imposed exile across continental Europe—living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris—yet his entire, meticulous body of work remained obsessively and comprehensively focused on the minutiae of his native city, making Dublin both the meticulously detailed setting and a central, inescapable character in his literary universe. His work is consistently characterized by its technical complexity, rich literary allusion, intricate symbolism, and an unflinching examination of the spectrum of human consciousness. Joyce began his published career with Dubliners (1914), a collection of fifteen short stories offering a naturalistic, often stark, depiction of middle-class Irish life and the moral and spiritual paralysis he observed in its inhabitants, concluding each story with a moment of crucial, sudden self-understanding he termed an "epiphany." This collection was followed by the highly autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), a Bildungsroman that meticulously chronicled the intellectual and artistic awakening of its protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, who would become Joyce's recurring alter ego and intellectual stand-in throughout his major works.
His magnum opus, Ulysses (1922), is universally regarded as a landmark work of fiction that fundamentally revolutionized the novel form. It compressed the events of a single, ordinary day—June 16, 1904, a date now globally celebrated by literary enthusiasts as "Bloomsday"—into a sprawling, epic narrative that structurally and symbolically paralleled Homer's Odyssey, using a dazzling array of distinct styles and linguistic invention across its eighteen episodes to explore the lives of Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly Bloom, and Stephen Dedalus in hyper-minute detail. The novel's explicit content and innovative, challenging structure led to its initial banning for obscenity in the United States and the United Kingdom, turning Joyce into a cause célèbre for artistic freedom and the boundaries of literary expression. His final, most challenging work, Finnegans Wake (1939), pushed the boundaries of language and conventional narrative even further, employing a dense, dream-like prose filled with multilingual puns, invented portmanteau words, and layered allusions that continues to divide and challenge readers and scholars to this day. A dedicated polyglot who reportedly learned several languages, including Norwegian simply to read Ibsen in the original, Joyce approached the English language not as a fixed entity with rigid rules, but as a malleable medium capable of infinite reinvention and expression. His personal life was marked by an unwavering dedication to his literary craft, a complex, devoted relationship with his wife Nora Barnacle, and chronic, debilitating eye problems that necessitated numerous painful surgeries throughout his life, sometimes forcing him to write with crayons on large white paper. Despite these severe physical ailments and financial struggles, his singular literary vision remained sharp, focused, and profoundly revolutionary. Joyce passed away in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1941, shortly after undergoing one of his many eye operations. Today, he is widely regarded as perhaps the most significant and challenging writer of the 20th century. His immense, complex legacy is robustly maintained by global academic study and institutions such as the James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which ensures his complex, demanding, and utterly brilliant work endures, inviting new generations of readers to explore the very essence of what it means to be hum

Reviews

[Andrea Allgayer · Rating 5 out of 5]

De Joyce me fascinan muchas cosas. Tiene algo en el transcurrir de las cosas, las conversaciones entre personajes que te obliga a leer como si escucharas una conversación de fondo en un bar. No sé muy bien quienes son ni de qué están hablando, pero estoy ahí.
Cuida mucho la descripción de los gestos, los chascarrillos y la cotidianeidad del lenguaje sin dejar de ser bello. Porque habla de la ciudad y de sus personajes de forma bella, aún en el gesto arrugado de un anciano, aún en las cortinas que se revuelven en forma de globos blancos batidas por el aire que entra y sale de las ventanas.
Me gustó leerme en lo quinqui que puede llegar a ser una novela que transcurre a principios de 1900 en Dublín, y en cómo esa precariedad, esa espera por tiempos mejores reverberan hasta encontrarme alargando mi descanso del trabajo para poder terminar estos cuentos.
Los Muertos es un cierre bonito por coherente; en apariencia, los relatos no tienen conexión entre sí, sin embargo, se despliegan dentro de una experiencia humana común, más allá de su contexto. Es esa nieve que cae, como se describe en el último párrafo, en todas partes por igual.

[Paula GIRALDEZ]

"Nuestro camino por la vida está sembrado de esa clase de recuerdos tristes, pero si estuviéramos siempre rememorándolos no nos quedarían ánimos para continuar nuestras cuitas entre los vivos. Todos tenemos deberes y afectos hacia los vivos que reclaman nuestras energías, y las reclaman justamente."

[Daniel Rivera · Rating 3 out of 5]

🎩15 relatos que aunque no tienen conexión entre ellos, tienen lugar en Dublín.

🎩Hay relatos que están muy bien, pero la mayoría son muy normalitos.

🎩No he notado eso de "la ciudad es un personaje más".

🎩Las temáticas de los relatos son muy variada. Algunas hablan de temas más religiosos, otros más culturales,...

[fedtin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cinco estrellas solo por Los Muertos. Por Dios.

[Carla Bane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Es lo que promete. Historias cortas de Dublín. Me gusta mucho la capacidad de Joyce de meterte en la atmósfera del momento.

Mi favorito es el de Un triste caso.

[Elena Paz · Rating 1 out of 5]

He abandonado este libro pero con el pensamiento de volver a darle una oportunidad en el futuro. He leído cuatro relatos y el problema que he tenido, ha sido que no me han hecho sentir nada. Ningún sentimiento ni negativo ni positivo y eso me ha frustrado bastante.

Como ya he comentado, le volveré a dar una oportunidad cuando me llame desde mi estantería, pero no voy a forzarme para leerlo, no quiero odiar este libro porque me obligué a terminarlo.