Araby” opens on North Richmond street in Dublin, where “an uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end,detached from its neighbours in a square ground.” The narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the story, lives withhis aunt and uncle. He describes his block, then discusses the former tenant who lived in his house: a priest who recentlydied in the back room. This priest has a library that attracts the young narrator, and he is particularly interested in threetitles: a Sir Walter Scott romance, a religious tract, and a police agent’s memoirs.