Background
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, United Kingdom, January 19, 1968, into a family of French teachers. Six weeks after birth, Barnes’ family settled in the suburbs of London.
(Metroland is a first person account of Christopher Lloyd ...)
Metroland is a first person account of Christopher Lloyd and his experiences growing up in the suburbs of London (so-called Metro-land), his brief life in Paris as a graduate student and the early years of his subsequent marriage. It is divided into three sections: I Metroland (1963); II Paris (1968); and III Metroland (1977). As adolescents Christopher and his childhood friend Toni had shown contempt for the bourgeois establishment but this lifestyle is one that Christopher ultimately chooses, much to Toni's disappointment, obtaining a secure job in publishing, marrying, buying a house and having a child. Christopher realises that his normal life and somewhat mundane marriage are not perfect, nor are they necessarily more exciting than his time in Paris with his bold French girlfriend Annick, but he does love his wife and is content.
https://www.amazon.com/Metroland-Julian-Barnes/dp/0679736085/?tag=2022091-20
1980
(In the grimy underbelly of London, private detective Duff...)
In the grimy underbelly of London, private detective Duffy takes on an extortion case and finds himself pitted against one of the city’s most dangerous crime lords Rosie McKechnie was alone when the two men entered her home, tied her to a chair, and cut her with a switchblade. It was a message for her husband, Brian. To outside appearances, Brian McKechnie is just a businessman. But to Big Eddy Martoff, London’s underworld kingpin, McKechnie is a big fat mark. With a history of crooked business deals and extramarital affairs, McKechnie is the perfect target. To beat back the blackmail, McKechnie needs someone who understands lowlifes like Martoff - and Nick Duffy knows lowlifes. Duffy was a copper until four years ago, when malicious rumors about his sex life ripped through the force. Now he is in private security, and McKechnie’s case is one he cannot refuse. Duffy, no stranger to his city’s seedier offerings, dives into a world of prostitutes, hoods, and porn moguls. Can he find a way to put the pinch on Big Eddy before Soho swallows him whole?
https://www.amazon.com/Duffy-Dan-Kavanagh-ebook/dp/B00J52FLFI/?tag=2022091-20
1980
(Duffy’s latest clients: The thieves of Heathrow Airport D...)
Duffy’s latest clients: The thieves of Heathrow Airport Down-and-out Duffy takes a stranger home from the pub for a one-night stand to take his mind off his scuffling private security business. But his bedmate surprises him with a job offer the next morning. Turns out Mr. Right Now is chummy with the freight thieves of Heathrow. The airport’s crooks pride themselves on their restraint, but someone has been pilfering much more than his share. The Heathrow hoods need a detective to find out who has been robbing them. The seedy, sly Duffy is the only man for such an absurd job. But when he baits his hook for the bad thieves, he lands something much more dangerous.
https://www.amazon.com/Fiddle-City-Duffy-Book-2-ebook/dp/B00J52FLI0/?tag=2022091-20
1981
(At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful nov...)
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Before-She-Met-Julian-Barnes/dp/0679736093/?tag=2022091-20
1982
(A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scho...)
A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar's search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert, and the obsession of this detective whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert's characters.
https://www.amazon.com/Flauberts-Parrot-Julian-Barnes/dp/0679731369/?tag=2022091-20
1984
(Danny Matson, Athletic’s top scorer, is out for the seaso...)
Danny Matson, Athletic’s top scorer, is out for the season after a scuffle inexplicably leaves him with a ruptured Achilles tendon. The team’s manager, Jimmy Lister, is convinced that someone is intentionally kicking the team while it’s down, and he hires Nick Duffy to get to the bottom of it. Duffy has always been a worrier. He frets about his weight, about his burgeoning relationship with constable Carol Lucas, about his promiscuity with both men and women, and about the AIDS epidemic sweeping through London. This latest case gives him an opportunity to focus his attention elsewhere, on a list of suspects ranging from trophy-hungry supporters to hardcore skinheads bent on whitewashing England.
https://www.amazon.com/Putting-Boot-Duffy-Book-3-ebook/dp/B00J52FLDU/?tag=2022091-20
1985
(Jean Serjeant, the heroine of Julian Barnes's wonderfully...)
Jean Serjeant, the heroine of Julian Barnes's wonderfully provocative novel, seems ordinary, but has an extraordinary disdain for wisdom. And as Barnes follows her from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, he confronts readers with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalog of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the twenty-first century (when The Absolute Truth can be universally accessed).
https://www.amazon.com/Staring-at-Sun-Vintage-International-ebook/dp/B004W3IDZU/?tag=2022091-20
1986
(Duffy is summoned to a country manor for his hairiest cas...)
Duffy is summoned to a country manor for his hairiest case yet Vic Crowther’s housekeeper found the body. Ricky bled out after crashing through the French windows of the manor’s library. Crowther doesn’t know who did this to Ricky, but he does know whom to blame. Duffy, the security consultant who installed the dodgy burglar alarm, will have to answer for this murder. When Duffy rushes out to the country to smooth things over, he finds more than one surprise. First of all, Ricky was a dog. And Braunscombe Hall is filled to capacity with strange folks - even by Duffy’s rarefied standards. His country sojourn is extended - as are his headaches - when he finds that each of the eccentric guests has a problem that needs his expertise.
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Dogs-Duffy-Book-4-ebook/dp/B00J52FLPI/?tag=2022091-20
1987
(It is a collection of short stories in different styles; ...)
It is a collection of short stories in different styles; however, at some points they echo each other and have subtle connection points. Most are fictional but some are historical.
https://www.amazon.com/History-World-10%C2%BD-Chapters/dp/1094015962/?tag=2022091-20
1989
(In this powerfully affecting Flaubert's Parrot gives read...)
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Over-Julian-Barnes/dp/0679736875/?tag=2022091-20
1991
(Set in a post-communist fictional country, likely based o...)
Set in a post-communist fictional country, likely based on Bulgaria, the novel concerns the trial of Stoyo Petkanov, a character judged to be loosely based on Todor Zhivkov, the former communist leader of Bulgaria. As the newly appointed Prosecutor General attempts to ensnare the former dictator with his own totalitarian laws, Petkanov springs a few unwelcome surprises on the court by conducting a formidable defense.
https://www.amazon.com/Porcupine-Vintage-International-Julian-Barnes-ebook/dp/B004V42XHO/?tag=2022091-20
1992
(In his first collection of short stories, Barnes explores...)
In his first collection of short stories, Barnes explores the narrow body of water containing the vast sea of prejudice and misapprehension which lies between England and France with acuity humor, and compassion. For whether Barnes's English characters come to France as conquerors or hostages, laborers, athletes, or aesthetes, what they discover, alongside rich food and barbarous sexual and religious practices, is their own ineradicable Englishness. The ten stories that make up Cross Channel introduce us to a plethora of intriguing, original, and sometimes ill-fated characters.
https://www.amazon.com/Channel-Vintage-International-Julian-Barnes-ebook/dp/B003FCVDYM/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(England, England is divided into three parts entitled "En...)
England, England is divided into three parts entitled "England", "England, England" and "Anglia". The first part focuses on the protagonist Martha Cochrane and her childhood memories. Growing up in the surrounding of the English countryside, her peaceful childhood gets disrupted when her father leaves the family. Martha's memories of her father are closely related to playing a Counties of England jigsaw puzzle with him.
https://www.amazon.com/England-Julian-Barnes/dp/0375405828/?tag=2022091-20
1998
(In Love, etc. Julian Barnes uses all the surprising, soph...)
In Love, etc. Julian Barnes uses all the surprising, sophisticated ingredients of a delightful farce to create a tragicomedy of human frailties and needs. After spending a decade in America as a successful businessman, Stuart returns to London and decides to look up his ex-wife Gillian. Their relationship had ended years before when Stuart’s witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. But now Stuart finds that the intervening years have left Oliver’s artistic ambitions in ruins and his relationship with Gillian on less than solid footing. When Stuart begins to suspect that he may be able to undo the results of their betrayal, he resolves to act. Written as an intimate series of crosscutting monologues that allow each character to whisper their secrets and interpretations directly to the reader, Love, etc. is an unsettling examination of confessional culture and a profound refection on the power of perspective.
https://www.amazon.com/Love-etc-Julian-Barnes/dp/0375725881/?tag=2022091-20
2000
(The characters in The Lemon Table are facing the ends of ...)
The characters in The Lemon Table are facing the ends of their lives - some with bitter regret, others with resignation, and others still with defiant rage. Their circumstances are just as varied as their responses. In 19th-century Sweden, three brief conversations provide the basis for a lifetime of longing. In today’s England, a retired army major heads into the city for his regimental dinner - and his annual appointment with a professional lady named Babs. Somewhere nearby, a devoted wife calms (or perhaps torments) her ailing husband by reading him recipes.
https://www.amazon.com/Lemon-Table-Vintage-International-ebook/dp/B000XUDG1C/?tag=2022091-20
2004
(As boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur,...)
As boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, living in shabby genteel Edinburgh, find themselves in a vast and complex world at the heart of the British Empire. Years later—one struggling with his identity in a world hostile to his ancestry, the other creating the world’s most famous detective while in love with a woman who is not his wife–their fates become inextricably connected.In Arthur & George, Julian Barnes explores the grand tapestry of late-Victorian Britain to create his most intriguing and engrossing novel yet.
https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-George-Julian-Barnes/dp/1400097037/?tag=2022091-20
2005
(This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged ma...)
This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged man, as he contends with a past he never thought much about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. Tony thought he left this all 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
https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Ending-Julian-Barnes/dp/0307947726/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(In these fourteen brilliant stories examines longing and ...)
In these fourteen brilliant stories examines longing and loss, friendship and love, the historical past and contemporary life. A newly divorced man invades his reticent girlfriend's privacy, only to discover that the information he finds reveals his own callously shallow curiosity. A couple comes together through an illicit cigarette and a song shared over the din of a Chinese restaurant. A widower revisiting the Scottish island he treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to overcome grief. And scattered throughout, a group of friends gather regularly at dinner parties, perfecting the art of cerebral, sometimes bawdy banter.
https://www.amazon.com/Pulse-Stories-International-Julian-Barnes/dp/0307742407/?tag=2022091-20
2011
(In this collection of essays on art, Barnes turns his nar...)
In this collection of essays on art, Barnes turns his narrative gifts toward some of the most important paintings in the Western canon, eloquently voicing our reactions to these images - what they cause us to think and feel, and why.
https://www.amazon.com/Keeping-Eye-Open-Vintage-International/dp/110187337X/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London ...)
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.
https://www.amazon.com/Man-Red-Coat-Julian-Barnes-ebook/dp/B07TZY86ZJ/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer D...)
A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. In 1936, Shostakovich, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, executed on the spot), Shostakovich reflects on his predicament, his personal history, his parents, various women and wives, his children - and all who are still alive themselves hang in the balance of his fate. And though a stroke of luck prevents him from becoming yet another casualty of the Great Terror, for decades to come he will be held fast under the thumb of despotism: made to represent Soviet values at a cultural conference in New York City, forced into joining the Party and compelled, constantly, to weigh appeasing those in power against the integrity of his music. Barnes elegantly guides us through the trajectory of Shostakovich’s career, at the same time illuminating the tumultuous evolution of the Soviet Union. The result is both a stunning portrait of a relentlessly fascinating man and a brilliant exploration of the meaning of art and its place in society.
https://www.amazon.com/Noise-Time-novel-Julian-Barnes-ebook/dp/B015VACH40/?tag=2022091-20
2016
(Most of us have only one story to tell...only one that ma...)
Most of us have only one story to tell...only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine. One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, nineteen-year-old Paul comes home from university and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. There he’s partnered with Susan Macleod, a fine player who’s forty-eight, confident, witty, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is a warm companion, her bond with Paul immediate. And soon, inevitably, they are lovers. Basking in the glow of one another, they set up house together in London. Decades later, Paul looks back at how they fell in love and how - gradually, relentlessly - everything fell apart. As he turns over his only story in his mind, examining it from different vantage points, he finds himself confronted with the contradictions and slips of his own memory - and the ways in which our narratives and our lives shape one another.
https://www.amazon.com/Only-Story-novel-Julian-Barnes-ebook/dp/B075614RHT/?tag=2022091-20
2018
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, United Kingdom, January 19, 1968, into a family of French teachers. Six weeks after birth, Barnes’ family settled in the suburbs of London.
Future writer differed greatly for very vivid imagination and a tendency to fantasize that did not stop him from being the fan of the football team Leicester since he was 5.
Julian Barnes was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964. In 1956, the family moved to Northwood, Middlesex. He then went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied Modern Languages.
After graduation, Julian Barnes worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. He then worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and the New Review. During his time at the New Statesman, Barnes suffered from debilitating shyness, saying: "When there were weekly meetings I would be paralysed into silence, and was thought of as the mute member of staff". From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesman and then for The Observer.
His first novel, Metroland (1980), is the story of Christopher, a young man from the London suburbs who travels to Paris as a student, finally returning to London. The novel deals with themes of idealism and sexual fidelity, and has the three-part structure that is a common recurrence in Barnes' work. His second novel Before She Met Me (1982) features a darker narrative, a story of revenge by a jealous historian who becomes obsessed by his second wife's past. Barnes's breakthrough novel Flaubert's Parrot (1984) departed from the traditional linear structure of his previous novels and featured a fragmentary biographical style story of an elderly doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who focuses obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert.
In 1980, Julian Barnes, under the name Dan Kavanagh, published the first of four crime novels about Duffy, one of Britain's first gay male detectives. Barnes was quoted as calling the use of a pseudonym, "liberating in that you could indulge any fantasies of violence you might have".
Staring at the Sun followed in 1986, another ambitious novel about a woman growing to maturity in post-war England who deals with issues of love, truth and mortality. In 1989 Julian Barnes published A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, which was also a non-linear novel, which uses a variety of writing styles to call into question the perceived notions of human history and knowledge itself.
In 1991, Julian Barnes published Talking It Over, a contemporary love triangle, in which the three characters take turns to talk to the reader, reflecting over common events. This was followed by a sequel, Love, etc (2000), which revisited the characters ten years on. Barnes's novel The Porcupine (1992) again deals with a historical theme as it depicts the trial of the former leader of a collapsed Communist country in Eastern Europe, Stoyo Petkanov, as he stands trial for crimes against his country.
Arthur & George (2005), a fictional account of a true crime that was investigated by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, launched Barnes's career into the more popular mainstream. It was the first of his novels to be featured on the New York Times bestsellers list for Hardback Fiction.
In 2003, Julian Barnes undertook a rare acting role as the voice of Georges Simenon in a BBC Radio 4 series of adaptations of Inspector Maigret stories.
Barnes' eleventh novel, The Sense of an Ending, published by Jonathan Cape, was released on 4 August 2011. In October of that year, the book was awarded the Man Booker Prize.
In 2013 Julian Barnes published Levels of Life. The first section of the work gives a history of early ballooning and aerial photography, describing the work of Gaspard-Félix Tournachon. The second part is a short story about Fred Burnaby and the French actor Sarah Bernhardt, both also balloonists. The third part is an essay discussing Barnes' grief over the death of his wife, Pat Kavanagh (although she is not named).
In 2013, Julian Barnes took on the British government over its "mass closure of public libraries", Britain's "slip down the world league table for literacy" and its "ideological worship of the market - as quasi-religious as nature-worship - and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor".
(In the grimy underbelly of London, private detective Duff...)
1980(In this collection of essays on art, Barnes turns his nar...)
2015(This intense novel follows Tony Webster, a middle-aged ma...)
2011(Metroland is a first person account of Christopher Lloyd ...)
1980(Set in a post-communist fictional country, likely based o...)
1992(In his first collection of short stories, Barnes explores...)
1996(A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scho...)
1984(Duffy’s latest clients: The thieves of Heathrow Airport D...)
1981(As boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur,...)
2005(The characters in The Lemon Table are facing the ends of ...)
2004(In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London ...)
2015(In this powerfully affecting Flaubert's Parrot gives read...)
1991(At the start of this fiendishly comic and suspenseful nov...)
1982(Jean Serjeant, the heroine of Julian Barnes's wonderfully...)
1986(It is a collection of short stories in different styles; ...)
1989(Danny Matson, Athletic’s top scorer, is out for the seaso...)
1985(In these fourteen brilliant stories examines longing and ...)
2011(In the Land of Pain - Alphonse Daudet’s poignant, humorou...)
2002(Duffy is summoned to a country manor for his hairiest cas...)
1987(England, England is divided into three parts entitled "En...)
1998(A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer D...)
2016(Most of us have only one story to tell...only one that ma...)
2018(In Love, etc. Julian Barnes uses all the surprising, soph...)
2000Julian Barnes maintains a high level of privacy with regard to his personal life, though he is often very candid in interviews. He married Pat Kavanagh, a literary agent, in 1979. She died on 20 October 2008 of a brain tumour.