Dubliners is a collection of short stories by James Joyce. The stories are set in Dublin, and they explore the themes of paralysis and escape. Many of the characters are trapped in their own lives, and they find relief through escape into alcohol, sex, or religion. The stories are narrated by a third-person limited point of view, and Joyce uses a stream-of-consciousness technique to capture the inner thoughts of his characters.

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," writes Tolstoy in his literary masterpiece Anna Karenina. Commonly regarded as one of the greatest realist novels ever written, Tolstoy himself saw it as his first true novel. The novel was not well received by critics when first published, but Tolstoy's fellow Russian greats all considered it a great work of art.