BBC Radio 4 will mark this month’s Bloomsday by bringing James Joyce’s Ulysses to life as never before.
Its June 16 schedule will feature a major dramatisation of the work throughout the day, beginning in the morning on Saturday Live and concluding just before the midnight news.
Mark Lawson will be based in Dublin for the duration, acting as a guide and offering fresh insights into one of literature’s most iconic works.
First published in its entirety in 1922, Ulysses traces the progress of Leopold Bloom, an advertising agent, as he makes his way through Dublin on an ordinary day – June 16, 1904.
A work of staggering inventiveness, Ulysses oscillates between gentle realism and wild surrealism, taking the reader on Bloom’s odyssey in the company of larger than life characters like Stephen Dedalus, Molly Bloom and Buck Mulligan.
The new Radio 4 dramatisation by Robin Brooks tells the story of Bloom’s journey in seven parts spanning five-and-a-half hours.
The cast is led by Henry Goodman as Leopold Bloom, with Andrew Scott as Stephen Dedalus, Niamh Cusack as Molly Bloom and Stephen Rea as the narrator.
