Ulysses:

'It is not that Ulysses excludes us; it is, rather, that it includes us in ways that no other work prepares us for. The question is not 'what is a novel?', but what can a novel be? Ulysses is the answer'Patrick McGuinness from his preface to The Restored TextInitially rejected by several printers in Dublin and London for containing 'obscene' content, Ulysses was first published in book form in a limited-edition printing of 1000 copies by Shakespeare and Company in Paris in 1922. A subsequent printing was impounded by US customs and for a period the novel was famed for its notoriety rather than its literary achievement.Like its author, Ulysses exists in a complicated push-pull relationship with its language - English - and its setting - Ireland. Joyce returns to the themes that had preoccupied him in previous works, including nationalism and empire, religion, identity and sex in a novel which gloriously brings Dublin on June 16th 1904 to the page.This edition of The Restored Text includes the revisions that Joyce made to the novel during his lifetime.