It has been said that James Joyce never wrote a thing unless it was a masterpiece. Many years since his death the assessment remains and is proven in his book of short stories, Dubliners. Written before 1905 when Irish nationalism was first on every Irishman’s mind, the compilation of stories deal with characters living in an Ireland not triumphant, but with characters who feel they have failed at life in an Ireland that has suffered mightily under the yokes of two tyrants, the British Government and the Catholic Church. Seeking a sense of identity and purpose in a land overtaken by powers that care little for their captives, James Joyce in plain and simple language presents and dissects the paralysis, the insecurities, the failure to thrive in a people so poorly served. Though many of the characters we meet in Dubliners will appear again Ulysses, this is not the Joyce of Ulysses with its sometimes difficult language and allusions. This is Joyce at his most matter of fact, providing the understatement necessary for wit and wisdom. The stories by the young artist are brilliant, sometimes painful in their searing honesty, humorous in the Irish way, and ultimately illuminating – as illuminating as the moments of epiphany that Joyce talked and wrote about as he formed, polished and nurtured his considerable aesthetic. (Summary by Michael Hogan)

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