265- ] English Literature
Julian Barnes
British author and critic
Facts
Also
Known As Julian Patrick Barnes • Edward
Pygge • Dan Kavanagh
Born January 19, 1946 (age 79) • Leicester •
England
Notable
Works “Arthur & George” •
“Elizabeth Finch” • “Flaubert’s Parrot” • “Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art”
• “Levels of Life” • “Nothing to Be Frightened Of” • “Pulse” • “Something to
Declare” • “The Lemon Table” • “The Man in the Red Coat” • “The Noise of Time”
• “The Only Story” • “The Pedant in the Kitchen” • “The Sense of an Ending” •
“Through the Window”
Julian
Barnes (born January 19, 1946, Leicester, England) is a British critic and
author of inventive and intellectual novels about obsessed characters curious
about the past. His most well-known novel is the award-winning The Sense of an
Ending (2011). He has also published many works of literary criticism and essay
collections.
Early
career
Barnes
attended Magdalen College, Oxford (B.A., 1968), and worked for three years as a
lexicographer on a new supplement of The Oxford English Dictionary. He began
contributing reviews to the Times Literary Supplement and the New Statesman in
the 1970s while publishing thrillers under his Dan Kavanagh pseudonym. These
books—which include Duffy (1980), Fiddle City (1981), Putting the Boot In
(1985), and Going to the Dogs (1987)—feature a protagonist named Duffy, a
bisexual ex-cop turned private detective.
Novels
and short stories
The
first novel published under Barnes’s own name was the coming-of-age story
Metroland (1980). Jealous obsession moves the protagonist of Before She Met Me
(1982) to scrutinize his new wife’s past. Flaubert’s Parrot (1984) is a
humorous mixture of biography, fiction, and literary criticism as a scholar
becomes obsessed with the 19th-century French writer Gustave Flaubert and with
the stuffed parrot that Flaubert used as inspiration in writing the short story
“Un Coeur simple.” Barnes’s later novels include A History of the World in
101/2 Chapters (1989), Talking It Over (1991), The Porcupine (1992), and Cross
Channel (1996). In the satirical England, England (1998), Barnes skewers modern
England in his portrayal of a theme park on the Isle of Wight, complete with
the royal family, the Tower of London, Robin Hood, and pubs.
Critics
thought Barnes showed a new depth of emotion in The Lemon Table (2004), a
collection of short stories in which most of the characters are consumed by
thoughts of death. He explores why some people are remembered after their death
and others are not in the historical novel Arthur & George (2005), in which
one of the title characters is based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 2011 Barnes
published Pulse, a collection of short stories, as well as The Sense of an
Ending, a Booker Prize-winning novel that uses an unreliable narrator to
explore the subjects of memory and aging. The Noise of Time (2016)
fictionalizes episodes from the life of Russian composer Dmitry Shostakovich.
In The Only Story (2018), Barnes explores memory and first love as a man looks
back on his relationship with an older woman. In 2022 he published Elizabeth
Finch, which centers on a man whose intellectual crush on one of his teachers
has a lasting impact on his life.
Nonfiction
works
Barnes’s
nonfiction work includes Something to Declare (2002), a collection of essays
about France and French culture; The Pedant in the Kitchen (2003), which
explores his love of food; Through the Window (2012), an exploration of his
literary influences; and Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art (2015). Barnes used
the story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi to explore Belle Époque Paris
in The Man in the Red Coat (2019).
Barnes’s
memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008) is an honest, oftentimes jarringly
critical look at his relationship with his parents and older brother. Levels of
Life (2013)—which pays tribute to his wife, who died in 2008—is a series of
linked essays. In 2025 Barnes published Changing My Mind, which makes a case
for the benefits of open-mindedness. The loosely connected essays discuss such
topics as books, politics, and Barnes’s post-college tenure at The Oxford
English Dictionary.
Julian Barnes
Julian
Barnes has written numerous novels, short stories, and essays. His writing has
earned him considerable respect as an author who deals with the themes of
history, reality, truth and love.
Barnes
has received several awards and honours for his writing, including the 2011 Man
Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending. Barnes's other awards include the
Somerset Maugham Award (Metroland 1981), Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (FP
1985); Prix Médicis (FP 1986); E. M. Forster Award; Gutenberg Prize (1987);
Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy, 1988); and the Prix Femina (Talking It Over
1992). Barnes was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1988,
Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 and Commandeur de l'Ordre
des Arts et des Lettres in 2004. In 2011 he was awarded the David Cohen Prize
for Literature. He received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence in
2013 and the 2015 Zinklar Award. He was awarded the 2021 Jerusalem Prize and
the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize, the latter for his book Nothing to Be
Frightened Of. Also in 2021, he was awarded the Jean Bernard Prize.
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