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The Dead is one of the twentieth century's most beautiful pieces of short literature. The story centres on Gabriel Conroy, a teacher and part-time book reviewer, and explores the relationships he has with his family and friends.
The story ends "… snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
About the author
1882-1941. Born in Dublin, Ireland, into a family of ten children, Joyce showed singular intelligence and a gift for writing from an early age. After leaving University College Dublin with a degree in modern languages, Joyce emigrated to Europe, living in Italy, Zurich and Paris. A string of short stories, including Dubliners, were followed by his first novel, Portrait of an Artist in 1916, and then the controversial but very successful Ulysses in 1922, a work in which he perfected his stream-of-consciousness style and made his name as a great literary figure. Joyce died in Zurich in 1941, two years after the publication of Finnegans Wake, his long-awaited follow up novel which earned him further honours.
