Dublin, Ireland, in the early years of the twentieth century. It is a poor city, and there is hard drinking, dishonesty, and violence just beneath the surface everywhere you look. Even for those who seem to live respectably - young or old - things are tough. Glance inside a few people´s lives, and you soon find loneliness and dissapointment, self hate, and despair. Oxford Bokworms Reader, stage 6 (B2-C1) - 2,500 headwords (word count 31,238) Anglický text.