- It is difficult to imagine what a similar novel would be like today.
We would not be where we are today if we had not had Ulysses and all the discussion about it, says translator Erik Andersson.
In Ulysses, the reader gets to follow ordinary people, their lives and everyday life in the city.
The poet and literary critic Jenny Tunedal believes that the novel is in a way rooted in the human body.
- It's about sex, it's about eating, it's about shit, it's about moving around the city.
It's like steaming and sweaty, she says.
Charged with immorality
During the last fifty pages of the book, the reader follows the main character Leopold Bloom's wife Molly, through her inner monologue.
The chapter is written as a stream of consciousness, a stream of consciousness.
When the book was published in the United States as a serial in a weekly magazine, this chapter was considered very controversial.
- When we have come to Molly's monologue at the end, America got enough and then Ulysses was charged with immorality.
Because Molly lies and pulls herself up in the morning and thinks about sex.
But since there was a prosecution and the rumor had spread, it became an immediate success, of course, says cultural journalist Ingrid Elam.
18 chapters in different styles
The book consists of 18 chapters, written in different styles and shapes, something that the translator Erik Andersson had to wrestle with when he worked on the book for three years.
- There was no editor for this book, no one who said "stop, now that's enough".
It's really too much of everything.
James Joyce was surrounded by people who considered him a genius and they encouraged him far too much, he says.