Dubliners; James Joyce (VIVI Classics)

Despite abandoning Ireland at the age of 20 for a lifetime of self-imposed exile, James Joyce seemed devoted to immortalizing his homeland in his stylistically revolutionary writings. The 15 stories in this 1914 collection present a kaleidoscopic view of Dublin's priests and politicians, children and old maids, con men and lovers. From a young boy's encounter with death in "The Sisters" to an uprooted intellectual's realization of how little he actually knows about his wife in the masterpiece "The Dead," Joyce conveys truths both blasphemous and sacramental in a scrupulous, deadpan realism.