Odysseus Nicholas Crabbe (based on the author) travelling back in time, discovering that he is the reincarnation of Odysseus, marrying Helen, being deified and ending up as one of the three Magi. James Joyce's novel "Ulysses" (first published 1918–1920) uses modern literary devices to narrate a single day in the life of a Dublin businessman named Leopold Bloom. Bloom's day turns out to bear many elaborate parallels to Odysseus' ten years of wandering. In Virginia Woolf's response novel "Mrs Dalloway" (1925) the comparable character is Clarisse Dalloway, who also appears in "The Voyage Out" (1915) and several short stories. Nikos Kazantzakis'
Leopold and Loeb form, but offered Levin a chance to contribute to his own memoir, which was in progress. Levin, unhappy with that suggestion, went ahead with his book alone, despite Leopold's express objections. The novel, titled "Compulsion", was published in 1956. Levin portrayed Leopold (under the pseudonym Judd Steiner) as a brilliant but deeply disturbed teenager, psychologically driven to kill because of his troubled childhood and an obsession with Loeb. Leopold later wrote that reading Levin's book made him "... physically sick ... More than once I had to lay the book down and wait for the nausea to subside. I felt