Books by Julian Barnes

Book SynopsisA new book from one of our most acclaimed writers. We always believe that changing our mind is an improvement, bringing a greater truthfulness to our dealings with the world and other people. It puts an end to vacillation, uncertainty, weak-mindedness. It seems to make us stronger and more mature. Well, we would think that, wouldn't we?'In this engaging and erudite essay, critically acclaimed writer Julian Barnes explores what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books; about memories, age and time.

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewI was captivated from the first page. I cannot remember when I enjoyed a first novel more -- Nina Bawden * Daily Telegraph *If all works of fiction were as thoughtful, as subtle, as well constructed, and as funny as Metroland there would be no more talk of the death of the novel * New Statesman *A rare and unusual first novel -- William Boyd * London Magazine *A very funny, touching first novel. It has a hard comic edge to it that is logical and at the same time extremely diverting * Spectator *One would have to look very hard to find a wryer, more lovingly detailed account of intellectual and sexual innocence abroad -- Jay Parini * New York Times *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewFew writers think and talk so beguilingly. This book is wonderfully funny. And intelligent. And moving * Independent on Sunday *Quicksilver clever and allusive * The Times *Scintillating... It's funny, quick on the draw, and knows when to soften the gaze. It reads so smoothly, the pages seem to flip themselves * Observer *A writer of rare intelligence. He catches the detail of contemporary life with an uncanny forensic skill... He is, as always, a superb ironist, a connoisseur of middling, muddling, modern England * London Review of Books *A wonderfully wistful and funny novel * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewPulse is Barnes’s 17th book and is a masterclass in the shorter form. -- Elizabeth Day * Observer *Julian Barnes writes so exquisitely that every page of this collection contains literary pearls * Mail on Sunday *All the stories in Pulse have the absolute completeness and density of the very best short fiction * New Statesman *Masterclasses in the form, full of the sidelong wit and intelligence that make the writer one of our most consistently deft short-form stylists * Daily Telegraph *Barnes' stylish prose, eye for emotional detail and sense of absurdity never let him down... He suits the short story very well * Literary Review *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewAll [the stories] are a joy to read as Barnes glides between forms...Each story is distinct and indelible, a tribute to the form. Above all they make you think about growing old and what, if anything, can be done about it. * Glasgow Herald *All have a photographic clarity, a psychological realism that embraces extremes of feeling...with a deliciously wry streak * Observer *Barnes's steely wit finds best expression when inhabiting the anguished and angry... Their brilliance rather plays upon our petty furies and failures, embellishing them with self-deprecatory wryness...entrancing and curiously cheering * New Statesman *Masterly...his best stories have a strong air of Maupassant about them...extraordinarily effective...a compelling series of vignettes of old age, executed with great skill * Daily Telegraph *Splendid, beautiful...reads like Turgenev * Spectator *

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Book Synopsis''A masterpiece... I would urge you to read - and re-read '' Daily Telegraph**Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011**Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.Now Tony is retired. He''s had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He''s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer''s letter is about to prove. Now a major film Trade ReviewA masterpiece... I would urge you to read - and re-read - The Sense of an Ending * Daily Telegraph *Mesmerising... the concluding scenes grip like a thriller - a whodunit of memory and morality * Independent *A very fine book, skilfully plotted, boldly conceived... Barnes has achieved...something of universal importance -- Justin Cartwright * Observer *A precise, poignant portrait of the costs and benefits of time passing, of friendship, of love. A small masterpiece -- Erica Wagner * The Times *A wonderful story that is all too human and all so real * Irish Times *

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Book SynopsisA new edition of the Booker Prize winner Penelope Fitzgerald's best-loved novel of romance in post-war Italy, with a new introduction by Julian Barnes.The Ridolfis are a Florentine family of long lineage and little money. It is 1955, and the family, like its decrepit villa and farm, has seen better days. Only eighteen-year-old Chiara shows anything like vitality.Chiara has set her heart on Salvatore, a young and brilliant doctor who resolved long ago to be emotionally dependent on no one. Faced with this, she calls on her English girlfriend Barney to help her make the impossible matchTrade Review‘Reading a Penelope Fitzgerald novel is like being taken for a ride in a peculiar kind of car. Everything is of top quality – the engine, the coachwork and the interior all fill you with confidence. Then, after a mile or so, someone throws the steering-wheel out of the window.’ Sebastian Faulks ‘Wise and ironic, funny and humane, Fitzgerald is a wonderful, wonderful writer.’ David Nicholls ‘Penelope Fitzgerald’s Innocence seems to me to be about real people undergoing real experiences, more real and more interesting than most biographies, and it carries absolute conviction as to time and place. What more could one ask of a novel?’ Spectator Books of the Year ‘Innocence weilds a curious fascination, replete with the sense of sleepy, slightly anxious fatalism that pervades much of the Italian cinema of the period. Its magic, and its message, are as oblique and inconclusive as the lives of its characters, but both have a lingering power, refreshingly fictive, deliciously un-English.’ Literary Review ‘I know of no one who expresses so deftly and entertainingly the way in which life seldom turns out as expected. A wonderful book.’ Spectator ‘This is by far the fullest and richest of Penelope Fitzgerald’s novels, and also the most ambitious. Her writing, as ever, has a natural authority, is very funny, warm and gently ironic, and full of tenderness towards human beings and their bravery in living.’ TLS

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewNone of Mr Barnes's previous work... has quite prepared us for the bewildering maturity of Staring at the Sun...it dazzles in depth * Harpers & Queen *Brilliant... Mr Barnes's work is at the forefront of a new internationalization of British fiction * New York Times *A remarkable and risk-taking book, breezily philosophical and light-fingered, funny and also genuinely affecting in that it touches both the heart and the head * Glasgow Herald *

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Book SynopsisWhen it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this disarmingly witty book, Julian Barnes confronts our unending obsession with the end. He reflects on what it means to miss God, whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually turn into our parents. Barnes is the perfect guide to the weirdness of the only thing that binds us all.Selected from the book Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian BarnesVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Calm by Tim ParksDrinking by John CheeverBabies by Anne EnrightPsychedelics by Aldous HuxleyTrade ReviewBoth fun and funny. It is sharp too, in the sense of painful as well as witty... Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche. He also tears at your heart * New Statesman *Imagine our joy when Vintage announced that it is publishing a collection of easily digestible books from the world’s most celebrated writers on the experiences that make us human… They look good and read well. That’s win/win in our book. * Stylist *

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Book SynopsisSelected and Introduced by Booker-Prize winner Julian Barnes'Reading Cheever is a restless pleasure, the work never settles: these brilliant stories make me get up and walk around the room' Anne Enright John Cheever - the 'Chekhov of the suburbs' - forever altered the landscape of contemporary literature. In a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his short stories, often published in the New Yorker, gave voice to the repressed desires and smouldering disappointments of 1950s America as it teetered on the edge of spiritual awakening and sexual liberation in the ensuing decades.Selected for the first time, these satirical, fantastical, sad and transcendent stories show Cheever in all his brilliance and continue to speak directly to the heart of human experience. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book AwardTrade ReviewOne of the great writers of the previous century -- John Self * The Times *There was a time in my life when I thought I would have to find a support group for people who loved Cheever as much as I do... I would write out his sentences by hand at times to see what does that feel like, to be able to have that felicity of language -- Elizabeth StroutAs stories go, as compellingly readable narratives of a certain sort of people in a certain time and place - our time and place-John Cheever's stories are, simply, the best * Washington Post *[Cheever's] magical capacity for marrying the quotidian with the surreal, so often soars. The new volume feels capacious, stuffed as it is with wonders * Sunday Times *John Cheever is an enchanted realist, and his voice, in his luminous short stories...is as rich and distinctive as any of the leading voices of postwar American literature -- Philip RothProfound and daring...some of the most wonderful stories any American has written * Boston Globe *Cheever shows a sublime psychological understanding of all that goes unsaid - whatever's not mentioned between couples is fully present and felt -- A M Homes

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Book Synopsis''I don''t believe in God, but I miss Him.'' Julian Barnes'' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his philosopher brother, a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that ''this is not my autobiography'', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers.Trade ReviewBoth fun and funny. It is sharp too, in the sense of painful as well as witty... Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche. He also tears at your heart * New Statesman *A maverick form of family memoir that is mainly an extended reflection on the fear of death and on that great consolation, religious belief... It is entertaining, intriguing, absorbing...an inventive and invigorating slant on what is nowadays called 'life writing'. It took me hours to write this review because each reference to my notes set me off rereading; that is a reviewer's ultimate accolade -- Penelope Lively * Financial Times *A brilliant bible of elegant despair...that most urgent kind of self-help manual: the one you must read before you die -- Tim Adams * Vogue *Intensely fascinating * The Times *An elegant memoir and meditation. A deep seismic tremor of a book that keeps rumbling and grumbling in the mind for weeks thereafter * Garrison Keillor *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewA short and brutally brilliant novel about a relationship ruined by jealousy, this is packed with acute observations about the nature of love * Metro *Frighteningly plausible... stunningly well done * Guardian *Funny, sad and faintly ominous...making jealousy tangible and dangerous * Spectator *An intelligent and addictive entertainment... Mr Barnes has succeeded in writing one of those books that keep us up until 2am reading just one chapter more... few will be able to resist its easy humour and almost insidious readability * New York Times Book Review *Compelling * Daily Express *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewFrequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, iconoclastic, and a delight to read. Barnes is like a worldly, secular reincarnation of a medieval gloss-writer on sacred texts, and what he offers us is the novel as footnote to history, as subversion of the given, as brilliant, elaborate doodle around the margins of what we think about what we think we know * Observer *You will want to read it again and again, and why not? - there's nothing around to touch it * Literary Review *There is more moral and intellectual fodder, and more jokes, here than you will read in a month of Sundays... storytelling and teaching which captivate, liberate, and above all, enchant * Financial Times *This is a novel like no other - provocative, superbly funny, a wonderful and most original work...gives the reader a sense of ebullient, whooping joy * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewCritics have overlooked his tenderness, underestimated his intelligence, and denied his wisdom... The Porcupine is a superbly accomplished novella * Nick Hornby *A minor masterpiece of political satire: compelling, funny and frightening * Robert Harris *The Porcupine is a new indisputable proof of Mr Barnes's creative power, yet what really astonished me, the Prosecutor, was the amazing precision of the intellectual's view of a socialist dictator, which so accorded with Zhivkov's true character * Prosecutor Zhekov, official prosecutor of the deposed Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov *The neatness of the novel's structure is complemented by the rampageous energy of the characters for which it is the cage * Daily Telegraph *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewSo elegant is Barnes’ prose that it’s easy to overlook his comic talents...this is Barnes cementing his reputation as a lively, curious reader as well as one of Britain’s best living writers. -- Tom Cox * Sunday Times, Books of the Year *Engaging, eloquent, entertaining and erudite... There is a capacious generosity throughout this book, and I would defy anyone not to leave without feeling both better informed and better disposed... It is rare indeed for a collection of occasional pieces such as this to inspire feelings of profound thankfulness. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotsman *A truly wonderful collection. * Sunday Times *The book relies on stylish intelligence and cool calm to accomplish its mastery… This is a coquettish book. Barnes flatters readers into feeling that they may be as shrewd, discriminating and attractive as he is. -- Richard Davenport-Hines * Spectator *A devastatingly brilliant critic. -- Olivia Laing * Prospect *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewBarnes manages to be erudite but extremely funny too… You never know what Barnes is going to do next and I admire that.’ -- Caroline Rees * Daily Express *Delightful and enriching... A book to revel in! -- Joseph HellerEndless food for thought, beautifully written... A tour de force -- Germaine GreerA gem: an unashamed literary novel that is also unashamed to be readable, and broadly entertaining. Bravo! -- John IrvingJulian Barnes' wry and graceful book, part novel, part stealthy literary criticism, traces the marks Flaubert made on a forgetting world. The writing is unfailingly sharp and often very funny, and among the best prose I have read in years * Sunday Times *

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Book Synopsis'BARNES'S MASTERPIECE' - OBSERVERIn May 1937 a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.‘Stunning’ Sunday Times‘A profound meditation on power and the relationship of art and power… It is a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding… I don’t think Barnes has written a finer, more truthful or more profound book’ Scotsman‘A tour de force by a master novelist at the top of his game’ Daily ExpressTrade ReviewA great novel, Barnes’s masterpiece… Exquisite, intimate detail. He has given us a novel that is powerfully affecting, a condensed masterpiece that traces the lifelong battle of one man’s conscience, one man’s art, with the insupportable exigencies of totalitarianism. -- Alex Preston * Observer *Barnes’s sombre, brilliant new novel opens with a scene like something from a story by Chekhov… Gleaming with intelligence and literary flair, this elegantly composed fictional meditation offers a fresh gloss on a musical genius’s collisions and collusions with power. -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *[Barnes is] a master of the narrative sidestep… Not just a novel about music, but something more like a musical novel… The story itself is structured in three parts that come together like a broken chord. It is a simple but brilliant device, and one that goes right to the heart of this novel. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst * The Times *A compelling novel about art and power, courage and cowardice, and the capriciousness of fate…Barnes brilliantly captures the composer’s conflicted state of mind…This book is only 190 pages long, but it packs an extraordinary emotional punch. -- Sebastian Shakespeare * Tatler *The writing in the early pages is magnificent… The reader has the confidence of being in the hands of a master storyteller… Barnes has a good sense of what life was like in the Soviet Union. He captures well the black humor, irony and cynicism. -- Orlando Figes * New York Review of Books *Julian Barnes’ novel deftly evokes the complexity of Shostakovich’s relationship with Stalin and the power of his oeuvre… Thick with period detail… The book returns us to the music itself, that immense 20th-century oeuvre that contains everything but confirms nothing. -- Hedley Twidle * Financial Times *Gripping… An intimately illuminating montage of Shostakovich’s life… Immediately engaging. -- James Lasdun * Guardian *A novel of deceptive slenderness... You expect nothing less from a writer soaked in Flaubert. -- Duncan White * Daily Telegraph *A series of elegant insights into the mind of a brilliant artist… Throughout, Barnes offers a surety of touch that few writers can match. * Independent on Sunday *[A] sad, self-lacerating and darkly funny hybrid of a novel. The Noise of Time is both a burrowing meditation on an artist’s lifelong relationship with totalitarian power, fear and compromise, and a fascinating fictional biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest composers… Barnes is a master. -- Tod Wodicka * The National *A profound meditation on power and the relationship of art and power… It presents a life, and refrains from judgment. It is a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding… I don’t think [Barnes] has written a finer, more truthful or more profound book. -- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *The skilled novelist here brings alive not just the political turmoil that surrounded Shostakovich, but his love for his wives, his love for his children, a vivid counterpoint of artistic freedom and political oppression – the eloquent conjuring of one glass of vodka clinking against another. * The Economist *

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Book SynopsisThe Sunday Times Bestseller from the Winner of the Booker PrizeShe will change the way you see the world . . . 'I'll remember Elizabeth Finch when most other characters I've met this year have faded' The TimesElizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration. Neil is just one of many who fell under her spell during his time in her class. Tasked with unpacking her notebooks after her death, Neil encounters once again Elizabeth's astonishing ideas on the past and on how to make sense of the present.But Elizabeth was much more than a scholar. Her secrets are waiting to be revealed . . . and will change Neil's view of the world forever.'Enthralling . . . A connoisseur and master of irony himself, [Barnes] fills this book with instances of its exhilarating power' Sunday Times'A lyrical, thoughtful and intriguing exploration of love, grief and the collective myths of history' BooklistTrade Review[Barnes] is always clever, often original and unusually funny... Elizabeth Finch...offers plenty to chew on...with barely a sentence in it that doesn't have some nutritional value. -- John Self * The Times *A singular tale. -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail, *Books to Look Out For 2022* *Everything Barnes writes changes everything... Barnes's latest novel, must be read at least twice for the full force of its voltage to be felt... A cryptic crossword of a novel, Elizabeth Finch is a tricksier and even brainier version of Flaubert's Parrot. -- Frances Wilson * Oldie *The book's central and most enthralling section...deals with a figure EF esteemed as a kindred spirit: Julian the Apostate... A bravura exercise in nimbly handled erudition... [Elizabeth Finch] also celebrates the cast of mind Barnes most prizes. A connoisseur and master of irony himself, he fills this book with instances of its exhilarating power. -- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *Elizabeth Finch ranks alongside Barnes' best. -- Joshua Pugh Ginn * UK Press Syndication *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewA beautiful and engrossing work * Independent on Sunday *Richly accomplished... Dazzling * Sunday Times *Excellent... Meticulously researched and vividly imagined, both gripping and thoughtful * Sunday Telegraph *From the first paragraphs we know ourselves to be in the hands of a major novelist... A compelling narrative, beautifully controlled... This novel is Barnes at his best -- P D James * The Times *As ever, Barnes serves up a master-class in character observation, lavishing attention on the minutiae of personality, the subtle and conflicting impulses that drive men and women. Barnes seems equipped to write with humour and elegance about anything he turns his attention to * Financial Times *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewThe triangle of deeply believable characters and the story of betrayal and revenge are so engrossing that you almost fail to notice the usual Barnesian fusillade of wit and brilliance * Sunday Times *The real wonder of this book is its apparent simplicity, its apparent slowness, the exactness and delicacy of its observations, the absolute firness of the form for the story. Of its kind - and I still don't dare to say what that kind might be - it's perfect * Daily Telegraph *This wonderfully entertaining novel... A work as skilled and satisfying as this can be nothing other than affirming: Barnes' delicate balance between laughter and despair lifts his entertainment into art * The Times *

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Book SynopsisAlphonse Daudet was a highly popular nineteenth-century French novelist, whose work radiated humour and good cheer. Few knew that for his entire adult life he suffered from syphilis, a disease both unmentionable and incurable at the time. What even fewer realised was that he kept an intimate notebook in which he recorded the development and terrifying effects of the disease. Describing a life in pain, and the sometimes alarming treatments he underwent, Daudet's journal is unique for its comic zest, lucid self-examination and stoicism.Translated by the Booker Prize-winning writer Julian Barnes.Trade ReviewBarnes...has given Daudet a startling resurrection * New York Times *A new translation of a forgotten pocket masterpiece by a forgotten pocket French writer, a very short, moving, book about pain -- ObserverVivid and impressionistic, it reads at times like a list of symptoms, at times like a sort of macabre prose poem… It looks like a slight book, but Daudet's eloquence is dynamite * Evening Standard *A great deal of this unique text needs explaining to modern readers. The footnotes that Barnes provides are wonders of information and observation, brilliant novellas in themselves * Sunday Times *This slim volume is full of snapshots from the frontier of pain: unsentimental observations, anecdotes and cries of anguish * Sunday Herald *

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Book Synopsis'As a mayor, I am responsible for the upkeep of rural roads; as poet, I prefer to see them neglected.'Jules Renard was a French literary figure of the late nineteenth century. Not a Parisian but a committed countryman, he was elected mayor in 1904 of the tiny village of Citry-le-Mines in a remote part of northern Burgundy. He had the soul of a rustic bourgeois but the ambition of a metropolitan, and his wife's money allowed him to move in elevated circles, though he seemed an awkward customer, a badger, and looked like one. He wrote fiction, journalism and drama, very successfully, but the Journal is Renard's masterpiece, the least categorizable work of the French fin de siècle.The Journal constitutes a profusion of entries, without stitching or pattern: mordant reflections on style, literature and theatre; portraits of family, friends and the Parisian literary scene; quasi-ethnographical observations on village life and notations of the natural world which are unlike anything except themselves.Samuel Beckett spoke of Renard in the same breath as Proust and Celine, wrote of the Journal that 'for me it is as inexhaustible as Boswell ' and believed his style was learnt from despair. Gide said the Journal was 'not a river but a distillery'. Sartre wrote that 'He invented the literature of silence'. But above all it is a moving and splintery piece of self-scrutiny.Julian Barnes has admired the Journal for many years and has made this new selection from the twelve hundred page Pléiade edition. Theo Cuffe's translation will help bring this fierce judge of human foibles to a new generation of readers.Trade ReviewWell over 100 years later, his writing is still fresh because it retains the tang of curiosity... He writes with such grace, and with such attention, that before long you begin to feel his Journals are not just writings about life, but life itself. * Mail on Sunday *

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewIt is extraordinary... [It] would seem to pull off the impossible: to recreate, on the page, what it is like to be alive in the world. -- Emma Brockes * Guardian *This is a book of rare intimacy and honesty about love and grief. To read it is a privilege. To have written it is astonishing. -- Ruth Scurr * The Times *It’s an unrestrained, affecting piece of writing, raw and honest and more truthful for its dignity and artistry... Anyone who has loved and suffered loss, or just suffered, should read this book, and re-read it, and re-read it. -- Martin Fletcher * Independent *Levels of Life is both a supremely crafted artefact and a desolating guidebook to the land of loss. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *While one might expect a Barnes book to impress, delight, move, disconcert or amuse, the last thing for which his work prepares us is the blast of paralysingly direct emotion that concludes Levels of Life. -- Tim Martin * Daily Telegraph *Levels of Life is, deep-down, a heartfelt attempt to chronicle the strange journey that follows the death of a loved one. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *A Taj Mahal made of paper not white marble. -- Peter Conrad * Observer *A magnificent blast of unflinching prose. * Daily Telegraph *Powerful and well-articulated. -- Roger Lewis * Daily Mail *It is true that the private language of love doesn’t generally translate; yet how vividly Barnes invokes the power and delicacy of what is lost to him. -- Jane Shilling * Sunday Telegraph *Profoundly emotive. * Sunday Times *He writes with aphoristic simplicity and a calm profundity, without ever sounding self-pitying, maudlin or trite… Levels of Life is at times unbearably sad, but it is also exquisite: a paean of love, and on love, and a book unexpectedly full of life. -- Rosemary Goring * Herald *A grief-stricken, achingly precise and bravely unconsoling exploration into the inadequacy of words. * Metro *An impassioned, raw insight into a survivor’s grief. * Sport *A confession of grief so emotively described that it leaves the reader cold with awe. -- Billy O'Callaghan * Irish Examiner *

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Book Synopsis*SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2020*'A bravura performance, highly entertaining' Evening StandardThe Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi.In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker - a scientific man with a famously complicated private life.Pozzi's life played out against the backdrop of the Parisian Belle Epoque. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. **SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2019**Trade ReviewWhat a deliciously intelligent entertainment this is, couched in a prose of enviable suppleness… a master is at work here. -- Rupert Christiansen * Daily Telegraph *One of his best books, very handsomely published too… [The Man in the Red Coat is] a bravura performance, highly entertaining. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard, Book of the Week *Do not google Samuel Jean Pozzi. If you want to enjoy Julian Barnes’s The Man in the Red Coat — and believe me, it’s teeming with delights — stay away from search engines and trust the author to tell the story in his own way… punctuated by the sound of gunshot…[this is a] brilliant, defiantly unconventional book. -- Adam Begley * Spectator *The Belle Époque is brought to life through three colourful lives in this sparkling account stuffed with top fin-de-siècle tittle-tattle. -- Robbie Millen and James Marriott * The Times *The Best Books of 2019* *Julian Barnes’s wonderful The Man in the Red Coat surges round Belle Epoque Paris… a story full of digressions, white peacocks, missing limbs, amusing adverbs and fantastic clothes. An absolute tonic for grey winter days. -- Claire Harman * Evening Standard *Books of the Year* *

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction As every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of Wight.Trade ReviewThe sharpest-tasting novel about the modern littleness of England. -- John Sutherland * The Times *Runs at glorious full tilt...delightful stuff * Independent *A brilliant, Swiftian fantasy * The Economist *There is no more intelligent writer on the literary scene. In this novel, he is also moving. He has written nothing more poignant and enticing -- John Carey * Sunday Times *Not only a very funny satire about England and the world... He has also skilfully dissected the discomforting ways in which we have all grown to accept, and even depend on, illusion * Wall Street Journal *

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Book Synopsis**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply moving novel by one of Britain's greatest mappers of the human heart.Trade ReviewA novelist at the height of his powers ... Quietly devastating. -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst * The Times *Exquisite. -- Kate Clanchy * Guardian *Emotionally acute, profoundly beautiful, as droll as it is deep... this has to be one of the smartest novels that 2018 has to offer. -- Hephzibah Anderson * Mail on Sunday *A gentle, bleak, and brilliant novel. -- Jon Day * Financial Times *Immensely powerful. -- Alex Clark * New Statesman *This intense, taut, sad and often beautiful tale may well be Barnes’ best novel for years. -- Lara Feigel * Spectator *A tender and heartbreaking novel. -- Alex Preston * Observer *As quiet and aching and intimate as a James Blake ballad. -- Rupert GooldA sensitive look at what makes lovers tick. -- Robbie Millen * The Times *A vivid dramatization of the narcissism of obsessive love. * Economist *

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Book SynopsisFlaubert’s Parrot, shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984, concerns the attempts of an increasingly bemused researcher to establish certain facts about a famous French novelist and the stuffed bird which used to sit on his desk.A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters blends fact and fiction in a virtuoso kaleidoscope of vignettes from Noah’s time to the present. One of the author’s most inventive works, it was praised by Salman Rushdie as ‘frequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, iconoclastic and a delight to read’.

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Book SynopsisNow a major film starring Academy Award nominees Jim Broadbent (Iris) and Charlotte Rampling (45 Years)Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011 Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.Now Tony is retired. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove.Trade ReviewA masterpiece... I would urge you to read - and re-read - The Sense of an Ending * Daily Telegraph *Mesmerising... the concluding scenes grip like a thriller - a whodunit of memory and morality * Independent *A very fine book, skilfully plotted, boldly conceived... Barnes has achieved...something of universal importance -- Justin Cartwright * Observer *A precise, poignant portrait of the costs and benefits of time passing, of friendship, of love. A small masterpiece -- Erica Wagner * The Times *A wonderful story that is all too human and all so real * Irish Times *An extremely moving, a precise book about the imprecision of memory and how it constructs people, stories and histories. -- Alasitair Bruce * Guardian *From the moment that we hear from the woodworm which snuck aboard Noah’s ark to the final pages of the novel, Barnes interrogates moral dilemmas and motivations. These tales could easily be read is isolation, but are much better when consumed as a whole. * WeAreTheCity *A masterpiece... I would urge you to read - and re-read - The Sense of an Ending * Daily Telegraph *Mesmerising... the concluding scenes grip like a thriller - a whodunit of memory and morality * Independent *A very fine book, skilfully plotted, boldly conceived... Barnes has achieved...something of universal importance -- Justin Cartwright * Observer *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewAlways intelligent and perceptive, but so beautifully written that it's easy to understand. * Week *Crisp with witty, urbane intelligence. * Sunday Times *Wonderfully ironic, perceptive and at times tender... Barnes has created something unique in his work, a particular way of looking at life, at words, at relationships, which is the mark of every true stylist * Financial Times *His writing demonstrates the billowing lightness of imagination... reading these stories, you perceive and love France afresh... Cross Channel is characterised by the intelligence, irony and wit you associate with his writing, but it is also suffused with feeling, deeply seasoned with affection * Independent *A glittering collection of stories... His marvellously supple and exact prose is matched with subjects that powerfully stir his creativity... It's impossible to imagine a fictional panorama of Britain's long relationship with France realized with more cordial understanding * Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisFrom the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending—a rich, witty, revelatory tour of Belle Époque Paris, told through the remarkable life story of the pioneering surgeon, Samuel Pozzi. • “A pleasure to read in every way.” —The New York Times Book Review In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. In

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Book SynopsisBOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.

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Book SynopsisAn extraordinary collection of essays on the great masters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art—from the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending. “An engaging and empathetic volume.” —The New York Times Book Review As Julian Barnes notes: “Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting … But it is a rare picture that stuns, or argues, us into silence. And if one does, it is only a short time before we want to explain and understand the very silence into which we have been plunged.” This is the exact dynamic that informs his new book. In his 1989 novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Barnes had a chapter on Géricault’s The Raft of the Medus

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