6/3/2013: updated cover image

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish writer James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941). Rated one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century, it was first serialized in parts from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety in February 1922, in Paris. Ulysses is the Latin name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's poem Odyssey.

Ulysses chronicles the passage of Leopold Bloom through Dublin, Ireland during an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. The novel is considered a landmark work of Modernist Literature. The novel establishes a series of parallels between its the episodes and those of Homer's Poem Odyssey (e.g., the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus, Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus to Telemachus).

James Joyce was a novelist and poet, and is considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses, through which he perfected the literary style "Stream of Consciousness" (Note: "Stream of Consciousness" is a narrative device used in literature "to depict the multitudinous thoughts and feelings which pass through the mind. Another phrase for it is 'interior monologue'.

"Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking."