App for The Dead: new life for Joyce's Dubliners

THE 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s short-story collection, Dubliners, is marked this year by an iPad app dedicated to its famous coda, ‘The Dead’.

The free download is available via Apple’s App Store today, on the Feast of the Epiphany. This was also the date on which the maiden aunts of Gabriel Conroy, ‘The Dead’s’ main character, held their annual dinner party at their “dark, gaunt house” on Usher’s Island on the south bank of the Liffey.

The app, which will soon be available in iPhone and Android versions, includes a reading of the story by Barry McGovern, a new setting of the text, and archive images of early 20th-century Dublin. There will also be talks by experts on ‘The Dead’ — a fitting addition to a story steeped in folklore, music, autobiography, politics and Dublin City.