James Joyce was born in Dublin in 1881. He abandoned a career in medicine to pursue his dream of being a writer. After meeting the love of life, Nora Barnacle, the two left Dublin in 1904 to live on the continent.

But Dublin never left James' heart. For the next three decades he based his characters on the friends, family and enemies he knew in Dublin.

As James continued his live in exile and battled bad health and family problems, his genius as a writer grew. In 1922 he published Ulysses, a novel that would become world famous and change the way books could be written and read.