The Inimitable Novel

The year 1922 marked the publication of two very important modern works: TS Eliot’s ‘The Wasteland’ and James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ in which Leopold Bloom the protagonist becomes the modern Odysseus. Except that the heroic journey becomes something quite different. This modern novel is also noted for its epic length and its use of a lexicon of more than 30,000 words. The novel has been decried as obscene, too experimental and praised as the product of genius.