`There was no doubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could do nothing in Dublin.`From a child coming to terms with the death of a priest to a young woman torn between leading an uneventful life in Dublin and fleeing Ireland with her lover, these fifteen stories bring to life the day-to-day existence of ordinary Dubliners in the early years of the twentieth century. With brutal realism, Joyce lays bare the struggles and desires of the Irish middle classes in a compelling and unique exploration of human experience.Completed in 1905, Dubliners was published nine years later, thanks to the author`s persistence. It was the first of Joyce`s novels to portray his home city, and is a seminal work by one of the most influential authors of the modern era.