A father and son acting duo, literary academics and computer scientists have teamed up on a project to mark the centenary of James Joyce’s first novel.

A map of locations from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man offers a chance to follow the journey of the book’s hero, Stephen Dedalus, around Dublin.

And the actors Barry McGovern and son Sam have recorded a new audio version of the novel, voicing Dedalus at different stages of his life.

Gerardine Meaney, a professor of cultural theory at University College Dublin, said it had taken a great deal of detective work to find the places in the book in today’s city.

“It is on Google Maps so if you want to travel around all the locations it will show you where Stephen lived, walked around or was educated and how it is in parallel to Joyce’s own journey,” she said.

“You can see from the interactive map that Stephen’s Dublin and Joyce’s Dublin are very close to each other. It was a struggle finding the old haunts of Dedalus. We even found the location of cottages mentioned in the novel near the river Tolka which are now under water.”

Barry McGovern, who has had roles in Game of Thrones and Braveheart, said of the novel: “I read it when I was at school and Joyce is still one of my favourite authors. It must have been startling at the time 100 years ago. Even though it is written in the third person, it feels like it has been composed in the first person when you read the passages about Stephen’s thoughts and actions.”

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man charts the wanderings and artistic development of Stephen Dedalus from his early childhood until he leaves Dublin at the age of 22. It was published initially in New York by BW Huebsch, which was also DH Lawrence’s publishing house.

The book describes Dedalus’s struggles against the influence of the Catholic church and the rise of radical nationalism, issues that in real life culminated in the Easter Rebellion, the war of independence and the civil war.



Dedalus’s journey mirrors the early life of Joyce himself, including the story of his family’s downward social mobility due to the author’s father’s drinking and neglect.