Ulysses

James Joyce's 1922 novel, set entirely within a single day in Dublin on 16 June 1904, is the most technically ambitious novel ever written. Its eighteen episodes each employ a different literary style, from interior monologue to catechism to mock-newspaper headlines. Banned in the United States until 1933 for obscenity, it was smuggled across the Atlantic inside copies of other books. The first edition of 1,000 copies, published by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare and Company in Paris, now sells at auction for over $100,000 each.