New Releases by Julian Barnes

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, one of our great novelists delivers a playful and profound work about memory, love, and the writer''s endgame. Shortly after our narrator, a writer named Julian, begins this compact book by discussing the workings of involuntary memory, he interrupts himself with a bulletin to the reader: "There will be a story—or a story within the story—but not just yet.” Of course, whether Departure(s) is mostly fiction or not, there is a lot of its author in it, including Barnes''s reckoning with the blood disorder he has been living with since he was diagnosed in 2020, his long preoccupation with dying and grief, and his mordant sense of the indignities and lost opportunities we''re prey to in love. The story he promises to deliver is a love story, that of two friends he met at university in the 1960s, that time of touted but rarely experienced sexual freedom. Julian played matchmaker to Stephen (tall, gangling, uncertain) and Jean (tart and attractive); as the third wheel he was deeply invested in the success of their love and insulted when they broke up. Time is swift, and forty years later, he tries again, watching as their rekindled affair produces joys, betrayals, and disappointments of a different order. "Life and memory can be so . . . quixotic, don''t you find?" Barnes uses both his novelistic memory and his (real?) personal diary entries to examine not just the quixotic relationship of Jean and Stephen but his writer''s eye upon it, and how his efforts in their behalf add up in the end. Having promised them he''d never write about them, he breaks the promise to fulfill one, amply, to his readers, in this delightful and poignant novelist’s game that only Julian Barnes knows how to play.

Bestselling author Julian Barnes illuminates the process of how minds are changed—about politics, books, words, memories, and more—in this wise and fascinating new book. “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 these engaging and erudite essays, critically acclaimed writer Julian Barnes explores what is involved when we change our minds: about words, about politics, about books, about memories, about age and time.

The Sunday Times Bestseller from the Winner of the Booker Prize She 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 Times Elizabeth 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'' Booklist

In ''Flauberts papegaai'' van Julian Barnes raakt Geoffrey Braithwaite, een ouder wordende arts wiens vrouw is overleden, gefascineerd door het leven en werk van Flaubert en reist regelmatig naar Frankrijk om alle plekken te bezoeken waar de schrijver gewoond en gewerkt heeft. Hij beschrijft zijn bevindingen in een poging te ontdekken wat er nu eigenlijk te weten valt over iemands leven – of het nu dat van Flaubert, van zijn overleden vrouw of van hemzelf is. ''Flauberts papegaai'' is een briljant en bijzonder geestig hoogtepunt in het oeuvre van Julian Barnes. Het is een roman, het is een biografie van Flaubert, het is literaire kritiek en het is tevens een commentaar op deze drie genres.

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending comes an extraordinary fictional portrait of the relentlessly fascinating Russian musician and composer Dmitri Shostakovich and a stunning meditation on the meaning of art and its place in society. • “Brilliant…. As elegantly constructed as a concerto.” —NPR 1936: Dmitri Shostakovich, just thirty years old, reckons with the first of three conversations with power that will irrevocably shape his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has suddenly denounced the young composer’s latest opera. Certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), Shostakovich reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, his daughter—all of those hanging in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, he will twice more be swept up by the forces of despotism: coerced into praising the Soviet state at a cultural conference in New York in 1948, and finally bullied into joining the Party in 1960. All the while, he is compelled to constantly weigh the specter of power against the integrity of his music.

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending and one of Britain’s greatest writers, a twist on the workshop story and defense of Papa Hemingway, with art, love, ambition mixed in. “Homage to Hemingway” is modeled after the oft-overlooked Ernest Hemingway story “Homage to Switzerland,” a formally experimental work composed of three related vignettes. Here, Barnes composes three portraits of the modern writing life, a rhapsodic, witty and hopeful account of the writer’s search for what is good and what is true. From Barnes’s collection of miscellaneous prose, Through the Window. An eBook short.

Part history, part fiction, part memoir, Levels of Life is a powerfully personal and unforgettable book, and an immediate classic on the subject of grief. Levels of Life opens in the nineteenth century with balloonists, photographers and Sarah Bernhardt, whose adventures lead seamlessly into an entirely personal account of the author''s own great loss. "You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed." Levels of Life is about ballooning, photography, love and grief; about putting two things, and two people, together, and about tearing them apart. One of the judges who awarded him the Booker Prize described Barnes as "an unparalleled magus of the heart." This book confirms that opinion.

Grotesque visionary Sir Jack Pitman has an idea. Since most people are too lazy to travel from landmark to landmark, why not simplify things and create a new England on the Isle of Wight? Unfortunately, his idea is a huge success, and the resulting theme park threatens to supersede the original. Called England, England, it has all the elements of "Old England" in one convenient location. Wander into the new Sherwood Forest and you may spot Robin Hood and his now sexually ambiguous Merrie Men. Or take a stroll to see Stonehenge and Anne Hathaway''s Cottage, enjoy a ploughman''s lunch atop the White Cliffs of Dover, then pop over to see the Royals, now on contract to Sir Jack, in their scaled-down version of Buckingham Palace. Every detail has been considered: even the postcards come pre-stamped! Julian Barnes'' first novel in six years is a ferociously funny examination of the search for authenticity and truth in a fabricated world.

From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending and one of Britain’s greatest writers: a brilliant collection of essays on the books and authors that have meant the most to him throughout his illustrious career. • "[A] blissfully intelligent gathering of literary essays." —Financial Times In these seventeen essays (plus a short story and a special preface, “A Life with Books”), Julian Barnes examines the British, French and American writers who have shaped his writing, as well as the cross-currents and overlappings of their different cultures. From the deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling’s view of France to the French view of Kipling, from the many translations of Madame Bovary to the fabulations of Ford Madox Ford, from the National Treasure status of George Orwell to the despair of Michel Houellebecq, Julian Barnes considers what fiction is, and what it can do. As he writes, “Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.”

The Pedant''s ambition is simple. He wants to cook tasty, nutritious food; he wants not to poison his friends; and he wants to expand, slowly and with pleasure, his culinary repertoire. A stern critic of himself and others, he knows he is never going to invent his own recipes (although he might, in a burst of enthusiasm, increase the quantity of a favourite ingredient). Rather, he is a recipe-bound follower of the instructions of others. It is in his interrogations of these recipes, and of those who create them, that the Pedant''s true pedantry emerges. How big, exactly, is a ''lump''? Is a ''slug'' larger than a ''gout''? When does a ''drizzle'' become a downpour? And what is the difference between slicing and chopping?This book is a witty and practical account of Julian Barnes'' search for gastronomic precision. It is a quest that leaves him seduced by Jane Grigson, infuriated by Nigel Slater, and reassured by Mrs Beeton''s Victorian virtues. The Pedant in the Kitchen is perfect comfort for anyone who has ever been defeated by a cookbook and is something that none of Julian Barnes'' legion of admirers will want to miss.

In ''Bark'', Jeanne-Etiene Delacour takes pleasure in the avoidance of any threat to his longevity. Formerly a gourmand and a gambler but now an ascetic, his fastidious new lifestyle is the result of an investment in a public works project - one which holds the promise of considerable reward for the last investor to survive. As he draws black lines through the thirty-nine names in his pocket book, the human capacity to rationalise any indulgence is explored. In ''The Silence'', a composer attests that silence is the logical conclusion to music. He considers the silence that has been in effect throughout the interminable wait for his Eight Symphony, and how it will segue into the silence that will follow the end of his life - a life he claims to have sacrificed on the altar of his art. Part of the Storycuts series, these two stories were previously published in the collection The Lemon Table.

Una obra magnífica, plena d''humor, profunditat i saviesa, finalista del Man Booker Prize. Probablement la millor creació de Julian Barnes. Un episodi real, oblidat, convertit en una magnífica novel·la: una obra que permet veure en acció el creador de Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, en un interessant cas d''intriga i prejudicis. Arthur Conan Doyle i George Edalji neixen a mitjan segle XIX a la Gran Bretanya. Els seus mons són distants: Arthur és metge i més tard escriptor de fama mundial gràcies a Sherlock Holmes; George, d''origen indi, fa d''advocat a Birmingham i treballa sense cap notorietat pública. Però a principis del segle XX uns misteriosos esdeveniments faran que els dos personatges coincideixin: es veuran involucrats en una trama policial amb cartes anònimes, atacs nocturns i enigmàtics assassinats que van trasbalsar l''opinió pública britànica. Fruit d''una intensa recerca, basada en un cas real, i de la brillant imaginació de Julian Barnes, Arthur i George retrata magníficament la societat victoriana i recrea les vides de dos personatges que esdevenen extraordinaris: George Edalji, acusat falsament i empresonat per motius racistes, i Arthur Conan Doyle, que va investigar el seu cas i va defensar públicament la seva innocència. Traducció d''Albert Torrescasana i Joan Puntí. ''Des del primer parràgraf, sabem que estem a les mans d''un gran novel·lista, que ens transporta a una irresistible narració, i que combina de manera genial biografia, història i l''emoció d''una trama d''intriga real. Barnes, en plena forma.'' [PD James, The Times] Julian Barnes Nascut a Leicester (Regne Unit) el 1946, Julian Barnes és un dels escriptors britànics més prestigiosos, de la generació de Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis i Graham Swift. Irònic, imprevisible i intel·ligent, Barnes és autor de les novel·les Metroland (1981), El lloro de Flaubert (1984) (Prix Médicis, 1986), Història del món en deu capítols i mig (1989), Anglaterra, Anglaterra (1998), Amor, etc. (2000), els reculls de contes Cross Channel (1996) i The Lemon Table (2004), entre altres. Ha rebut nombrosos premis literaris i importants distincions -E.M. Forster de l''American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986), William Shakespeare de la Fundació FvS (1993), el Premi Àustria de literatura estrangera (2004) i Commandeur de l''Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2004). Arthur i George fou seleccionada per al Man Booker Prize el 2005. Julian Barnes viu actualment a Londres. Web de Julian Barnes Arthur i George, de Julian Barnes (Narratives) Res a témer, de Julian Barnes Pulsacions, de Julian Barnes

The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending traces the life of a seemingly ordinary woman with an extraordinary disdain for wisdom in this “marvelous literary epiphany” (The New York Times Book Review). In this wonderfully provocative novel, Barnes follows Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, confronting readers with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalogue of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the twenty-first century (when The Absolute Truth can be universally accessed). Elegant, funny and intellectually subversive, Staring at the Sun is Julian Barnes at his most dazzlingly original.

The bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending delivers “a remarkably original and subtle book” (The New York Review of Books) about the nature of love and jealousy. At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful novel, a mild-mannered English academic chuckles as he watches his wife commit adultery. The action takes place before she met him. But lines between film and reality, past and present become terrifyingly blurred in this sad and funny tour de force from the author of Flaubert''s Parrot.

Follows a middle-aged man as he reflects on a past he thought was behind him, until he is presented with a legacy that forces him to reconsider different decisions, and to revise his place in the world.

Master prose stylist Julian Barnes presents a collection of stories whose characters are growing old and facing the end of their lives—some with bitterness, some with resignation and others with raging defiance. “Life is just a premature reaction to death,” was what Viv’s husband used to say. Once her lover and friend, he is now Viv’s semi-helpless charge, who is daily sinking ever deeper into dementia. In “Appetite,” Viv has found a way to reach her husband: by reading aloud snippets of recipe books until he calls out indelible—and sometimes unfortunate—scenes locked away in his brain. In “The Things You Know,” two elderly friends enjoy their monthly breakfast meetings that neither would ever think of missing. Of course, all they really have in common is a fondness for flat suede shoes and a propensity for thinking spiteful, unspoken thoughts about one another’s dead husbands. “The Fruit Cage” is narrated by a middle-aged man whose seemingly orderly upbringing is harrowingly undone when he discovers that his parents’ old age is not necessarily a time of serenity but actually an age of aroused, perhaps violent, passions. In these stories, Julian Barnes displays the erudition, wit and uncanny insight into the human mind that mark him as one of today’s great writers, one whose intellect and humour never obscure a genuine affection for his characters.

"I don’t believe in God, but I miss him." So begins Julian Barnes’s brilliant new book that is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God and a homage to the writer Jules Renard. Barnes also draws poignant portraits of the last days of his parents, recalled with great detail, affection and exasperation. Other examples he takes up include writers, "most of them dead and quite a few of them French," as well as some composers, for good measure. The grace with which Barnes weaves together all of these threads makes the experience of reading the book nothing less than exhilarating. Although he cautions us that "this is not my autobiography," the book nonetheless reveals much about Barnes the man and the novelist: how he thinks and how he writes and how he lives. At once deadly serious and dazzlingly playful, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a wise, funny and constantly surprising tour of the human condition.

Conversations with Julian Barnes collects eighteen interviews, conducted over nearly three decades, by journalists and correspondents throughout the world with the author (b. 1946) of such highly praised novels as Flaubert''s Parrot and Arthur & George. The interviews collectively address the entirety of Julian Barnes''s varied works and provide readers the most vivid portrait yet of contexts and influences behind his ten novels, his short stories, and his essays. The interviews focus not only on the author''s fiction but also on his essays, translations, and pseudonymous writings. Barnes''s evolving understanding of the themes developed in his works (history, truth, love, art, and death), his views on the art of the writing process, and the role of authors in contemporary society are also discussed at length.

A seize ans, Christopher et Toni, deux inséparables copains, réalisent que c''est uniquement dans le métro qu''ils peuvent être vraiment seuls avec eux-mêmes et imaginer tout ce qui changera quand ils seront enfin dans la Vraie Vie. Il y aura le mariage - et l''amour huit fois par nuit -, de grandes quantités d''argent à la banque, les boîtes de nuit... Bref, les rêves de tous les garçons de leur âge. Mais sous la plume de Julian Barnes, qui signait là son premier roman, leur éducation sentimentale et autre devient un petit chef-d''œuvre de drôlerie... Un jour, ils auront vingt ans, puis davantage. Lequel des deux saura le mieux équilibrer les contraintes et les illusions ?

In his latest novel, Julian Barnes, author of Talking It Over and A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, trains his laser-bright prose on the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Stoyo Petkanov, the deposed Party leader, is placed on trial for crimes that range from corruption to political murder. Petkanov''s guilt -- and the righteousness of his opponents -- would seem to be self-evident. But, as brilliantly imagined by Barnes, the trial of this cunning and unrepentant dictator illuminates the shadowy frontier between the rusted myths of the Communist past and a capitalist future in which everything is up for grabs.

With brilliant wit, idiosyncratic intelligence, and a bold grasp of intricate political realities, the celebrated author of Flaubert''s Parrot turns his satiric glance homeward to England, in a sparkling collection of essays that illustrates the infinite variety of contemporary London life.

In this powerfully affecting Flaubert''s Parrot gives readers a brilliant take on the deceptions that make up the quivering substrata of erotic love. "An interplay of serious thought and dazzling wit. . . . It''s moving, it''s funny, it''s frightening . . . fiction at its best."--New York Times Book Review.

La historia del mundo que nos cuenta Julian Barnes comienza en el arca de Noe y termina en el Paraiso, y entretanto la cruzan navios diversos: la balsa de la Medusa, que inspira la celebre pintura de Gericault; el Saint Louis, un barco de B+condenadosB; , que tras zarpar rumbo a La Habana con 937 judios alemanes expulsados de carceles y campos de concentracion, recorrio medio mundo sin que ningun pais aceptara su cargamento, por lo que tuvo que poner rumbo a Alemania; la fragil barca en la que se hace a la mar australiana desesperada y quiza loca, convencida de que el mundo ha sido arrasado por la guerra atomica; y hasta la nave espacial de un astronauta que encuentra a Dios en los espacios - nunca mejor dicho que cada uno tiene el Dios que se merece - y acaba B+redescubriendoB; el arca de Noe en el monte Ararat, en uno de los ironicos equivocos con que Barnes obsequia a sus lectores.B+Un libro quiza muy dificil de resumir, pero en absoluto dificil de leer. Serio e impertinente, fantastico y absolutamente realista, poetico y satirico, enormemente inteligente y muy, muy divertidoB; (R. Irwing, The Listener).B+Julian Barnes ha escrito un libro brillante, imaginativo, audaz, iconoclasta, original, y un verdadero placer para el lector. Que mas se podria pedir?B; (Salman Rushdie).

Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired physician, devotes his final years to a manic examination of literary facts concerning his favourite author. Hilarious in many of its details, yet serious in its search for clues to Flaubert''s character. Nominated for the 1984 Booker Prize.