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This volume continues the masterly unabridged reading of the short stories. It contains the last five stories from the collection: A Painful Case, Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace, and perhaps the most welt-known of all the stories (and the longest), The Dead.

Jim Norton has established a special reputation for his recordings of Joyce for Naxos AudioBooks. Released so far are Ulysses, Finnegans Wake, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Dubliners Volume I.

EXCERPT

The Sisters

There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said to me: I am not long for this world, and I had thought his words idle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Old Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to supper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if returning to some former remark of his:

-- No, I wouldn't say he was exactly...but there was something queer...there was something uncanny about him. I'll tell you my opinion...

He began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his mind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather interesting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him and his endless stories about the distillery.

-- I have my own theory about it, he said. I think it was one of those...peculiar cases...But it's hard to say....

He began to puff again at his pipe without giving us histheory. My uncle saw me staring and said to me:

-- Well, so your old friend is gone, you'll be sorry to hear.

-- Who? said I.

-- Father Flynn.

-- Is he dead?

-- Mr Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.

I knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the news had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter.

-- The youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a great deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.

-- God have mercy on his soul, said my aunt piously.

Old Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little

Joyce's first major work, written when he was only twenty - five, brought his city to the world for the first time. His stories are rooted in the rich detail of Dublin life, portraying ordinary, often defeated lives with unflinching realism. He writes of social decline, sexual desire and exploitation, corruption and personal failure, yet creates a brilliantly compelling, unique vision of the world and of human experience. 'Joyce redeems his Dubliners, assures their identity, and makes their social existence appear permanent and immortal, like the streets they walk.' Tom Paulin