7 h 42 minAudiobook9 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the hardest journey is leaving the life you already know?
In James Joyce’s Dubliners, ordinary days hold quiet crises. A boy dreams of adventure beyond his street. Eveline keeps her father’s house while a chance to sail away with Frank pulls her toward another life. Money, family, church and fear stand between people and what they want.
These fifteen short stories move through childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life in early twentieth-century Dublin. The Sisters, An Encounter and Araby open with boys watching the adult world. A Little Cloud follows the poetry-loving clerk Little Chandler, while Ivy Day in the Committee Room turns toward politics. Together, these intimate portraits let a whole city come into view.
What you’ll discover
- Childhood with open eyes Follow young narrators whose hopes for adventure meet the puzzling lives of adults.
- The pull of escape Feel Eveline’s quiet tension as the prospect of departure meets the weight of duty.
- Dreams beside ordinary work Meet Little Chandler, a modest clerk whose taste for poetry sharpens his envy.
- A city beyond doorways Enter offices, pubs and a winter party, where private wishes meet public expectations.
- Small moments, sudden insight Discover how Joyce’s plain, exact style brings hidden crises into focus without scolding.
Who will love it
For readers who love short, precise fiction, a city as a character, and ordinary lives shaped by dreams of escape, love and duty. It also offers a first step into Joyce.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Three boys begin to see Dublin
- Young adults weigh escape against duty
- Adults discover how small their lives are
- Public life shows politics, art and religion
- Paralysis and the sudden moment of insight
- A plain style that hides careful design
Who’s who
- The boy narratorA thoughtful child in the first three stories who watches adults closely and dreams of adventure and love beyond his quiet street.
- EvelineA young woman who keeps her father's house and is offered a chance to sail away with a sailor named Frank.
- Little ChandlerA modest clerk who writes poetry in his head and envies his friend Ignatius Gallaher's glamorous life in London.
- FarringtonA copying clerk in a law office, resentful of his sarcastic boss and eager for relief in the pubs.
- MariaA kind, small laundry worker who is well liked and spends a Halloween evening visiting a family she helped raise.
- Mr DuffyA bank cashier who keeps to a strict, solitary routine until a friendship with Mrs Sinico disturbs it.
- Gabriel ConroyA teacher and writer who must give the speech at the Misses Morkan's annual party and wants it to go well.
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- Audiobook
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- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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Dubliners
by James Joyce · 1914
In Dublin, a young woman weighs a chance to sail away against her duty to her father's house.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 6
Three boys begin to see Dublin
The collection opens with three stories told in the first person by a boy. They are The Sisters, An Encounter and Araby. In the first, the boy is shaken by the death of Father Flynn, an old priest who had taught him Latin and talked to him about the church. The boy goes to the dead man's house, where the priest's two sisters receive visitors. The grown-ups speak in hints and half sentences, and the boy senses that something about the priest was never fully explained.
In An Encounter, the boy and a friend decide to skip school for a day of adventure. They call it mitching, which is Irish slang for playing truant. They cross the river and walk toward the Pigeon House, a power station on the edge of Dublin Bay. Their dream is of wild places and far-off ships, but Dublin keeps showing them its ordinary face. Then they meet an older man whose strange talk makes the day uneasy.
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What is Dubliners about?
Dubliners is a book of fifteen short stories about ordinary people in Dublin around 1900. They are grouped by childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life, and they show people trapped by habit, church, money and family.
What does paralysis mean in Dubliners?
Joyce used paralysis to describe a city where people feel stuck. Characters dream of escape, love or success, but fear, duty and routine keep them still, and few of them act on what they want.
Is Dubliners hard to read?
It is the easiest of Joyce's major works. The language is plain and the stories are short.
The author
James Joyce
1882–1941 · Irish novelist and poet
James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, born in Dublin in 1882. He lived in Trieste, Zurich and Paris after leaving Ireland. He published Dubliners in 1914, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, and Ulysses in 1922. He died in Zurich in 1941.
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