About The Book

How We Mortals
BLAME THE GODS

Four very different people, one potentially awful event, and the dark secrets that bind them all. Set on June 16th, 2004 in Ireland, this debut novel shadows James Joyce’s Ulysses one hundred years after the original Bloomsday of Joyce’s novel. It contemporises the issues of religion, gender equality and identity in modern Ireland. It is a tale of a failed marriage, the complicated lives of a group of young people, political corruption, and an Islamic terrorist plot. All the action takes place on one day during the Joycean Bloomsday centenary celebrations. The language is gritty, exciting and frustrating as it twirls through the lives of the four main narrators who seek to resolve the personal conflicts and secrets that have dominated their lives.
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It is June 16th, 2004, Dublin, Ireland. Centenary celebrations for James Joyce’s Ulysses are in full flow.

A troubled boy is about to walk into the Bloomsday Centenary Concert, which is packed full of dignitaries, and blow himself up.

Inside the concert hall, the lives of four unsuspecting people spin towards each other: Omar Wilde, a half-Egyptian/half-Irish journalist struggling with an ailing marriage; Flora Wilde, his headstrong Polish wife, haunted by the loss of their stillborn child; Kieran Lynch, a young actor playing the character of Stephen Dedalus on the streets of Dublin that day; and Bláithín O’Leary, an emotionally fragile young actress and drug addict who is dragged into a political scandal involving a cabinet minister who happens to be her father.

Four very different people,
one potentially awful event, and
the dark secrets that bind them together.

Map

I have put together a custom-made Map of the routes the characters take throughout the book. It is colour-coded according to character, and the original ‘Ulysses’ route which corresponds with How We Mortals Blame The Gods is highlighted. Please feel free to download it if you would like to visualize where the characters are walking.
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Soundtrack

How We Mortals BLAME THE GODS

DUBLIN IS A CITY OF MUSIC, and just like Joyce, I felt it could only come properly alive by framing the story in the sounds of the city. I myself cannot imagine life without a permanent soundtrack. Music is everywhere in the streets, cafés, pubs, homes, ears and imaginations of Irish people. Therefore, I decided to embed a soundtrack into my novel. I have tried both to reflect the music I was hearing all over Dublin at that time, as well as music I consider appropriate to the theme. I hope more than anything that some of these works will be a reflection of the incredible wealth of musical talent that our poetic island has to offer. The non-Irish pieces are personal favourites and appropriate to the scene at hand. I invite anyone who wants the full experience to download the tracks on their music providers and play them while reading the appropriate scene. If you have Spotify, the songlist has already been put together for you and is at this location online.

Click Here to Listen