James Joyce is a great Irish writer, a classic and simultaneously a destroyer of the classics and their canons. He is the man to whom, more than anyone else, new literary schools and movements of the 20th century owe their birth. His novel Ulysses (1922) is the writer's magnum opus, defining the development of prose and repeatedly recognized as the best and most significant novel in the history of this genre. According to the author, Ulysses—the story of a single day lived by one ordinary person in a small European town—contained within itself the entirety of literature, with all its styles and techniques, and expressed everything that art can say about humanity.

"A wonderful book. A great book... You don't understand it because you don't have time. And I had plenty of time, I read five hours a day and read it six times. At first, I too had the feeling that I didn't understand, and then everything gradually emerged - you know, like a photograph being developed. Hemingway, Dos Passos came out of him. They all feed on the crumbs from his table."