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Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946 in Leicester, England) is a contemporary English writer. He has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize (Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005)). He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.
owing an education at the City of London School and Magdalen College, Oxford, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently, he worked as a literary editor and film critic.
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Quotations
This is I have to admit, one murky compartment of the female psyche which has yet to benefit from the oven-scourer of Reason.
Page 43.
Now, Stuart, as you will discover if you have not done so already, believes that the principal raison d'etre of food is to conceal from public view the hideous pattern on the plate beneath.
Page 28.
Encyclopedia
Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946 in Leicester, England) is a contemporary English writer. He has been shortlisted three times for the Man Booker Prize (Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005)). He has written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh.
Personal life
Following an education at the City of London School and Magdalen College, Oxford, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary. Subsequently, he worked as a literary editor and film critic. He now writes full-time. His brother, Jonathan Barnes, is a philosopher specializing in Ancient Philosophy.
He lived in London with his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, until her death on 20 October 2008.
Career
His first novel, Metroland, is a short, semi-autobiographical story of Christopher, a young man from the London suburbs who travels to Paris as a student, finally returning to London. It deals with themes of idealism, sexual fidelity and has the three-part structure that is a common theme in Barnes' work. In 1983, his second novel Before She Met Me 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 broke with the traditional linear structure of his previous novels and consists of a fragmentary biographical narrative of an elderly doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who focuses obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert. The novel was published to great acclaim, especially in France.
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 Barnes published A History of the World in 10 1/2 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, he 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 ten years later by a sequel, Love, etc.., which revisited the characters ten years later.
Barnes is a keen Francophile, and his 1996 book, Cross Channel, is a collection of 10 stories charting Britain's relationship with France. He also returned to the topic of France in Something to Declare, a collection of essays on French subjects.
Other works include England, England, a satire on Britishness and the culture of tourism; and Arthur and George, a detailed story based on the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and his involvement in the Great Wyrley Outrages. His 1992 book, The Porcupine, deals with the trial of a fictional former Communist dictator.
Barnes' most recent book, a non-fiction exploration of the meaning of death called Nothing to be Frightened of, was published by Jonathan Cape in March 2008 and was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize.
Works (novels unless otherwise indicated)
Works as Dan Kavanagh
- Duffy (1980)
- Fiddle City (1981)
- Putting the Boot In (1985)
- Going to the Dogs (1987)
Awards and Recognitions
- Somerset Maugham Award, 1981, for Metroland
- Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, 1985, for Flaubert's Parrot
- E. M. Forster Award, 1986
- Prix Médicis, 1986, for Flaubert's Parrot
- Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1988
- Shakespeare Prize, 1993
- Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 1995
- Austrian State Prize for European Literature, 2004
- Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, 2004
Nominations
- Booker Prize for Fiction, 1984, for Flaubert's Parrot
- Booker Prize for Fiction, 1998, for England, England
- Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 2005, for Arthur and George
- Commonwealth Writers Prize, 2006, for Arthur and George
- International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2007, for Arthur and George
- Duff Cooper Prize, nomination pending February 19, 2009 award announcement
About Barnes
- Merritt Moseley, Understanding Julian Barnes, University of South Carolina Press (1997)
- Vanessa Guignery, The fiction of Julian Barnes: A reader's guide to essential criticism, Palgrave Macmillan (2006)
- Matthew Pateman, Julian Barnes: Writers and Their Work, Northcote House, (2002)
- Bruce Sesto, Language, History, And Metanarrative In the Fiction of Julian Barnes, Peter Lang (2001)
See also
External links
- - includes facts about Barnes and Arthur & George
- - with profile and links to further articles.
- , Untitled Books, July 2008*
- on BBC HARDtalk Extra programme - broadcast on 22 September, 2006
- on open2.net
- at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
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