"Don't you think there is a certain resemblance between the mystery of the Mass and what I am trying to do?...To give people some kind of intellectual pleasure or spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of everyday life into something that has a permanent artistic life of its own." - James Joyce, in a letter to his brother. With these fifteen stories, James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction, using a scrupulous, deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental. Whether writing about the death of a fallen priest ("The Sisters"), the petty sexual and fiscal machinations of "Two Gallants," or of the Christmas party at which an uprooted intellectual discovers just how little he really knows about his wife ("The Dead"), Joyce takes narrative places it had never been before.

詹姆斯·喬伊斯(James Joyce，1882—1941)，愛爾蘭作傢、詩人。1882年2月2日齣生於都柏林，1941年1月13日卒於瑞士蘇黎世。他是意識流文學的開山鼻祖，其長篇小說《尤利西斯》成為意識流文學的代錶作，是二十世紀最偉大的小說之一。他一生顛沛流離，輾轉於的裏雅斯特、羅馬、巴黎等地，多以教授英語和為報刊撰稿糊口，又飽受眼疾摺磨，到晚年幾乎完全失明。但他對文學矢誌不渝，勤奮寫作，終成一代巨匠。