The Dead is the final story in James Joyce’s collection Dubliners, but it is also sometimes issued as a single-volume novella, which is what I read. Published in 1914, it centres on a teacher called Gabriel Conroy attending a Christmas party hosted by his aunts. It is easily short enough to read in a single sitting, as I did, and has been cited by TS Eliot and others as literature’s finest short story.

It becomes a meditation on the relationship between life and death, and particularly, how all of our lives are influenced by people who are now dead. There’s also some reflection of how little we know about what goes on inside others’ heads, even those we know intimately.

If I had been reading this blind, I’m not convinced that I would have dated it at more than a century old. I would have said that it was well crafted, and did a good job of drawing out quite complex ideas through a relatable real-world situation in a few pages. However, I don’t think I would have ever imagined it to be considered one of the best short stories of all time… but then that judgement is based on a century of other works building on these ideas.

This is a book that’s well-quoted elsewhere, but I particularly enjoyed the line:

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.