TS Eliot described it as one of the greatest short stories ever written. James Joyce finished the final story in his collection Dubliners, The Dead, in Trieste 1907. This story of the Misses Morkan’s annual gathering of family, friends and music students is framed by the elderly sisters’ nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta and a personal epiphany triggered by the fragment of a song. Professors Declan Kiberd, Anne Fogarty and Gerardine Meaney help us unpack the story and find out why it has such resonance and power.