The intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions with which he has been raised. He finally leaves for abroad to pursue his ambitions as an artist. The work is an early example of some of Joyce's modernist techniques that would later be represented in a more developed manner by Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. The novel, which has had a "huge influence on novelists across the world", was ranked by Modern Library as the third greatest English-language novel of the 20th century. Sold and delivered by Audible, an Amazon company. Read more Read less. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Get Audible Free. Get this audiobook free.

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Cancel anytime. Tadhg Hynes, a Dubliner, narrates James Joyce's revolutionary masterpiece. Hynes says, "Don't be put off by its reputation. You don't need a university degree though some like to think that you do! It's a book for everyone, and as you become familiar with the way Joyce writes, this becomes obvious. I've tried to bring out the Dublin wit and the unique language of its people, and I hope that this adds to the enjoyment of this great book. Joyce's first major work, written when he was only 25, brought his city to the world for the first time.
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This is James Joyce's first novel, the semi-autobiographical story of a young Irish boy who struggles with family, country, and religion to become an artist and a man. Summary by Peter Bobbe. Bobbe 5 stars Just so good. We really do not deserve green Peter Bobbe, and yet we have this achievement in audio lit—which probably took him an afternoon; it seems so effortless, yet so perfect—which I cannot stop appreciating. I hope PB knows how special this thing he made really is.. Beautiful to the point of tears, painful, haunting, hilarious, it never fails to touch me. It is also decidedly the best librivox recording I have heard so far. Peter Bobbe conveys all the passion, the lust for life and the sadness in his reading. Highly recommendable. A masterful book that is witty and sad and humorous, sometimes all at once.
What appeared at the time to be unprecedented about the novel seems more mundane to us today, whereas what then came across as mundane now seems unprecedented. The first time I heard about James Joyce, I was 18 years old, working as a substitute teacher in a small community in northern Norway and wanting to be a writer. I longed to get away. What I wanted was to write, and I resolved to read this marvelous work and be illuminated by all its radiance. Literature was somewhere other than me, so I thought, and related to that was another idea I had, that everything of meaning was to be found at the center, that only there did important things happen, while all that occurred on the periphery — where I felt I was — was without significance and unworthy of being written about. History belonged to others, literature belonged to others, truth belonged to others.