Ulysses: Mahler after Joyce

A twist on the Irish literary classic Ulysses, told through Nicolas Mahler’s distinctive graphic novel style.

Dublin, 16 June 1904: through a day in the life of the advertising agent Leopold Bloom and the sensations of the ordinary, James Joyce created a maximal book from a minimum of matter. Ulysses, the most important novel of modernity, is a defining book of the twentieth century. Joyce’s creation-also spectacularly innovative in form-inspired Nicolas Mahler to attempt a literary retelling that is not a mere illustration or adaption of the novel but an independent and equally as inventive work. Using comics, Mahler transforms the various literary techniques of the original. He assembles his images with humorous and philosophical verve, quoting and rambling along in the spirit of Joyce.

With this graphic interpretation of the modern classic, which also constitutes a homage to the golden era of the newspaper comic strip, Ulysses can be newly discovered in a delightfully unexpected form.