Written as an homage to Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey, Ulysses follows its hero, Leopold Bloom, through the streets of Dublin. Overflowing with puns, references to classical literature, and stream-of-consciousness writing, this is a complex, multilayered novel about one day in the life of an ordinary man. Initially banned in the United States but overturned by a legal challenge by Random House’s Bennett Cerf, Ulysses was called “a memorable catastrophe” (Virginia Woolf), “a book to which we are all indebted” (T. S. Eliot), and “the most faithful X-ray ever taken of the ordinary human consciousness” (Edmund Wilson). Joyce himself said, “There is not one single serious line in [Ulysses].
