<p>With these fifteen stories James Joyce reinvented the art of fiction using a scrupulous deadpan realism to convey truths that were at once blasphemous and sacramental. Whether writing about the death of a fallen priest (&quot;The Sisters&quot;) the petty sexual and fiscal machinations of &quot;Two Gallants&quot; or of the Christmas party at which an uprooted intellectual discovers just how little he really knows about his wife (&quot;The Dead&quot;) Joyce takes narrative places it had never been before.</p>