Irish · 1882–1941
James Joyce transformed the novel with "Ulysses," a book that follows Leopold Bloom through a single Dublin day in June 1904. The Irish author's experiments with stream of consciousness, parody, and linguistic invention influenced every serious novelist who followed. "Dubliners" captured his city in crystalline short stories; "Finnegans Wake" pushed language to its limits. Joyce spent his adult life in exile—Trieste, Zurich, Paris—while writing obsessively about the Dublin he left behind.