Celebrate Bloomsday on Saturday

Thanks for a great 10th birthday

I received a flood of incredibly kind and generous messages over the last two weeks for Bridge’s 10th birthday. It’s wonderful to see how many people have been touched by this little bookshop.

Thank you to everyone who made the last 10 days of celebrations so special.

Newsletters are now back to our weekly schedule 🙂

Last chance to book for Bloomsday at Bridge

On Saturday, we’re celebrating Ulysses, including an isiZulu version of Molly’s soliloquy, as well as readings in English, Dutch, French and German.

Anthony Akerman will speak about reading Ulysses in South Africa.
Followed by South African authors Ivan Vladislavić and Terry-Ann Adams in conversation about bringing cities like Joburg and Dublin to life on the page.

Afterwards, we’ll have sundowners and a harvest table in the newly renovated Barbican 10th-floor penthouse, overlooking Joburg.

Joyce said about writing Ulysses, that he wanted to “give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed.” That is the kind of portrait of Joburg we want to promote – to look at our own city as complex, poetic and worthy of literary focus.

As a groundbreaking modernist novel, Ulysses has presented a challenge to translators across the world for the last century. But each translation has brought the city of Dublin onto a new page and into another person’s hands.

“Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” - Ulysses by James Joyce

Don’t miss out on this celebration of Joyce, language, and the spaces we walk through.

Tickets here

Bloomsday reading list

We have put together a collection of books that bring cities (particularly our Joburg) to life on the page and invite readers to walk their streets.

Browse the collection