James Joyce is "the greatest literary rebel of our time,"wrote Sean O'Faolain. He rebelled against social and literary conventions, against Catholicism,and against Dublin, the city at the center of this magnificent early collection of stories.

In Dubliners, Joyce paints vivid portraits of the denizens of the city of his birth, from the young boy encountering death in the first story, "The Sisters," to the middle-aged Gabriel of the haunting final story,"The Dead." The collection is both an unflinchingly realistic portrait of "dear dirty Dublin" and,as Joyce himself explained, a chapter of the moral history of his country from which his countrymen could get "one good look at themselves." It is a remarkable look, by turns bawdy and witty, but always darkened by a paralysis of spirit and emotions.Each of these fifteen stories startles the reader into realizing universal truths in moments Joyce called epiphanies.

"I"m afraid I can"t read James Joyce": a common complaint,usually delivered with a satisfied smile. There is so much else to read, why bother with word games invented by a writer who boasted that the difficulty of his work would keep scholars busy for generations?

Yet Joyce is one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century--perhaps the greatest. There is no need to avoid him.Those who have found themselves unable to finish Ulysses or even to begin Finnegans Wake should try his first book,Dubliners. They will fred no plainer English.

Not for one page of Dubliners need readers feel that they are getting Joyce for Juniors. These fifteen stories, written by Joyce between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-five, stand beside those of Chekhov and Flaubert, and culminate in what may be the finest short story in the English language. Joyce"swork, moreover, shows remarkable coherence from beginning to end. The main themes, symbols, even some characters, of the later books are introduced in Dubliners. Martin Cunningham in "Grace,, for example, reappears in Ulysses."Grace" itself can be taken as a kind of Finnegans Wake in miniature: a resurrection comedy, a tale of a corpse that will not stay dead. Like the Wake, "Grace" opens with the Fall of Man--Mr. Kernan tumbling down a flight of stairs into a gentlemen"s lavatory---and ends with a new beginning...

Introduction by Brenda Maddox

THE SISTERS

AN ENCOUNTER

ARABY

EVELINE

AFTER THE RACE

TWO GALLANTS

THE BOARDING HOUSE

A LITTLE CLOUD

COUNTERPARTS

CLAY

A PAINFUL CASE

IVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM

A MOTHER

GRACE

THE DEAD