How We Mortals Blame The Gods

Written by Máirín Mc Sweeney

Narrated by Aidan Kelly and Aoife McMahon

On the verge of a marital breakup after the death of their stillborn son, a middle-aged journalist, Omar Wilde, who is covering the Centenary Bloomsday celebrations of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ in Dublin, Ireland, is desperately looking for ‘the story’ which will prove his worth to his disillusioned wife, Flora. While wandering around the Bloomsday celebrations he and a young actor, Kiarán Lynch (Kinch), who unbeknownst to Omar is involved with his wife, find themselves embroiled in a potential terrorist attack. Faced with this life-threatening situation, Omar must finally surmount his fears and sense of failure before hundreds of people including many dignitaries are murdered horribly.

The novel is a shadowing of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ set 100 years to the day, June 16th 2004, after Joyce’s masterpiece. It contemporizes similar issues such as religion, gender equality, and identity in modern Ireland, and attempts to answer the question: ‘If the characters of Joyce’s Ulysses were alive in modern Dublin who might they be?’ 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Araby Publishing
• Release date: Jun 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739646226