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Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes

Overview
Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

, for his book The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel written by British author Julian Barnes. The book is Barnes' eleventh novel and was released on 4 August 2011 in the United Kingdom. The Sense of an Ending is narrated by a middle-aged man named Tony Webster, who recalls how he and his clique met Adrian Finn...

. Three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot
Flaubert's Parrot
Flaubert's Parrot is a novel by Julian Barnes that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize the following year...

(1984), England, England
England, England
England, England is a satirical science fiction novel by Julian Barnes which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel is set in the Britain of the not-too-distant future, and chronicles the creation of a giant England themed amusement park, called "England, England", which also operates as...

(1998), and Arthur & George
Arthur & George
Arthur & George is the tenth novel by English author Julian Barnes which takes as its basis the true story of the 'Great Wyrley Outrages.'-Plot introduction:...

(2005).
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Quotations

I read Hemingway's posthumous Paris memoirs, rumoured to have been written by his wife (

Out of the question,' Toni assured me,

You need one of those slave-driving old studio bosses if you ask me, not a sensitive graduate who went into movies because he liked the clouds in Antonioni and then turned himself into a nouvelle vague Deutscher all hot for Truthspiel.

Page 194.

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.

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.
Encyclopedia
Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

, for his book The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel written by British author Julian Barnes. The book is Barnes' eleventh novel and was released on 4 August 2011 in the United Kingdom. The Sense of an Ending is narrated by a middle-aged man named Tony Webster, who recalls how he and his clique met Adrian Finn...

. Three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot
Flaubert's Parrot
Flaubert's Parrot is a novel by Julian Barnes that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize the following year...

(1984), England, England
England, England
England, England is a satirical science fiction novel by Julian Barnes which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel is set in the Britain of the not-too-distant future, and chronicles the creation of a giant England themed amusement park, called "England, England", which also operates as...

(1998), and Arthur & George
Arthur & George
Arthur & George is the tenth novel by English author Julian Barnes which takes as its basis the true story of the 'Great Wyrley Outrages.'-Plot introduction:...

(2005).

Barnes has written crime fiction
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...

 under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. Barnes is one of the best-loved English writers in France, where he has won several literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis
Prix Médicis
The Prix Médicis is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by Gala Barbisan and Jean-Pierre Giraudoux. It is awarded to an author whose "fame does not yet match his talent."...

 for Flaubert’s Parrot and the Prix Femina
Prix Femina
The Prix Femina is a French literary prize created in 1904 by 22 writers for the magazine La Vie heureuse . The prize is decided each year by an exclusively female jury, although the authors of the winning works do not have to be women...

 for Talking It Over. He is an officer of L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, and confirmed as part of the Ordre national du Mérite by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963...

.

Early life


Although Barnes was born in Leicester
Leicester
Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

, his family moved to the outer suburbs of London six weeks later. Both of his parents were teachers of French. He has said that his support for Leicester City Football Club
Leicester City F.C.
Leicester City Football Club , also known as The Foxes, is an English professional football club based at the King Power Stadium in Leicester...

 was, aged four or five, "a sentimental way of hanging on" to his home city. He was educated at the City of London School
City of London School
The City of London School is a boys' independent day school on the banks of the River Thames in the City of London, England. It is the brother school of the City of London School for Girls and the co-educational City of London Freemen's School...

 from 1957 to 1964. At the age of 10, Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagination". As an adolescent he lived in Northwood, Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...

, the 'Metroland' of which he named his first novel. He then went on to Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

, where he studied Modern Languages. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

 supplement for three years. He then worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....

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
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

.

Career


His first novel, Metroland (1980), 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. After reading the novel, Barnes' mother complained about the book's "bombardment" of filth. 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 featured a fragmentary biographical style story 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, and it established Barnes as one of the pre-eminent writers of his generation. 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 10½ Chapters
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1989. 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.-Background:One of the many...

, 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 on.

Barnes is a keen Francophile
Francophile
Is a person with a positive predisposition or interest toward the government, culture, history, or people of France. This could include France itself and its history, the French language, French cuisine, literature, etc...

, 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.

In 2003, Barnes appeared as the voice of Georges Simenon
Georges Simenon
Georges Joseph Christian Simenon was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.-Early life and education:...

 in a BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 series of adaptations of Inspector Maigret stories.
Other works include England, England
England, England
England, England is a satirical science fiction novel by Julian Barnes which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel is set in the Britain of the not-too-distant future, and chronicles the creation of a giant England themed amusement park, called "England, England", which also operates as...

, a satire on Britishness and the culture of tourism; and Arthur & George
Arthur & George
Arthur & George is the tenth novel by English author Julian Barnes which takes as its basis the true story of the 'Great Wyrley Outrages.'-Plot introduction:...

, a detailed story based on the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and his involvement in the Great Wyrley
Great Wyrley
Great Wyrley is a parish and town in South Staffordshire, England, with a population of 11,236 at the 2001 census.-Etymology:The word "Wyrley" derives from two Old English words: wir and leah. Wir meant "bog myrtle," and leah meant "woodland clearing," suggesting that Great Wyrley was, at genesis,...

 Outrages. His 1992 book, The Porcupine
The Porcupine
The Porcupine is a short novel by Julian Barnes originally published in 1992. Before its British release date the book was first published earlier that year in Bulgarian, with the title Bodlivo Svinche by Obsidian of Sofia.-Synopsis:...

, deals with the trial of a fictional former Communist dictator.

Barnes' eleventh novel, The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending
The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel written by British author Julian Barnes. The book is Barnes' eleventh novel and was released on 4 August 2011 in the United Kingdom. The Sense of an Ending is narrated by a middle-aged man named Tony Webster, who recalls how he and his clique met Adrian Finn...

, published by Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape was a London-based publisher founded in 1919 as "Page & Co" by Herbert Jonathan Cape , formerly a manager at Duckworth who had worked his way up from a position of bookshop errand boy. Cape brought with him the rights to cheap editions of the popular author Elinor Glyn and sales of...

, was released on 4 August 2011. In October of that year, the book was awarded the Man Booker Prize
Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

. The judges took 31 minutes to decide the winner and head judge, Stella Rimington
Stella Rimington
Dame Stella Rimington, DCB is a British author, who was the Director General of MI5 from 1992 to 1996. She was the first female DG of MI5, and the first DG whose name was publicised on appointment...

, said The Sense of an Ending was a "beautifully written book" and the panel thought it "spoke to humankind in the 21st Century." Salman Rushdie tweeted Barnes his congratulations.

Personal life


His wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh
Pat Kavanagh (agent)
Patricia Olive Kavanagh was a British literary agent.Kavanagh was born in 1940 in Durban, South Africa, where her father was a journalist. Her half-sister, Julie Kavanagh, is a ballet critic. Her half-brother, Michael O'Brien is a geologist for AngloGold Ashanti in Johannesburg...

, died of a brain tumour on 20 October 2008. He lives in London. His brother, Jonathan Barnes
Jonathan Barnes
Jonathan Barnes is a British philosopher, translator and historian of ancient philosophy.-Education and career:He was educated at the City of London School and Balliol College, Oxford University....

, is a philosopher specialised in Ancient Philosophy
Ancient philosophy
This page lists some links to ancient philosophy. In Western philosophy, the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire marked the ending of Hellenistic philosophy and ushered in the beginnings of Medieval philosophy, whereas in Eastern philosophy, the spread of Islam through the Arab Empire...

. He is the patron of human rights organisation Freedom from Torture.

Awards and honors

  • 2011 Costa Book Awards
    2011 Costa Book Awards
    The shortlists were announced on 16 November 2011. The winners in each category will be announced in January 2012.-Children's Book:Winner:*TBDShortlist:*Martyn Bedford, Flip*Frank Cottrell Boyce, The Unforgotten Coat...

    , shortlist, The Sense of an Ending

Novels

  • Metroland
    Metroland (novel)
    Metroland is an English novel written by Julian Barnes and published in 1980. It is a first person account of Christopher Lloyd and his experiences growing up in the suburbs of London , his brief life in Paris as a graduate student and the early years of his subsequent marriage...

    (1980)
  • Before She Met Me (1982)
  • Flaubert's Parrot
    Flaubert's Parrot
    Flaubert's Parrot is a novel by Julian Barnes that was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984 and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize the following year...

    (1984) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
    Man Booker Prize
    The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

  • Staring at the Sun
    Staring at the Sun (novel)
    Staring at The Sun is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1986.- Plot summary :Julian Barnes examines the ordinary life of Jean Serjeant from her childhood in the 1920s through her adulthood to the year 2021. Throughout her life, Jean learns to question the world's idea of truth while she...

    (1986)
  • A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
    A History of the World in 10½ Chapters
    A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1989. 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.-Background:One of the many...

    (1989)
  • Talking It Over
    Talking It Over
    Talking It Over is a novel by Julian Barnes published in 1991, it won the Prix Femina Étranger the following year.It concerns a love triangle in which each of the three people concerned take it in turns to tell the story from their perspective using first person narrative...

    (1991)
  • The Porcupine
    The Porcupine
    The Porcupine is a short novel by Julian Barnes originally published in 1992. Before its British release date the book was first published earlier that year in Bulgarian, with the title Bodlivo Svinche by Obsidian of Sofia.-Synopsis:...

    (1992)
  • England, England
    England, England
    England, England is a satirical science fiction novel by Julian Barnes which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel is set in the Britain of the not-too-distant future, and chronicles the creation of a giant England themed amusement park, called "England, England", which also operates as...

    (1998) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
    Man Booker Prize
    The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

  • Love, etc (2000) – sequel to Talking it Over
  • Arthur & George
    Arthur & George
    Arthur & George is the tenth novel by English author Julian Barnes which takes as its basis the true story of the 'Great Wyrley Outrages.'-Plot introduction:...

    (2005) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
    Man Booker Prize
    The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...

  • The Sense of an Ending
    The Sense of an Ending
    The Sense of an Ending is a 2011 novel written by British author Julian Barnes. The book is Barnes' eleventh novel and was released on 4 August 2011 in the United Kingdom. The Sense of an Ending is narrated by a middle-aged man named Tony Webster, who recalls how he and his clique met Adrian Finn...

    (2011) – winner of the Booker Prize
    Man Booker Prize
    The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original full-length novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, Ireland, or Zimbabwe. The winner of the Man Booker Prize is generally assured of international renown and...


Collections and Non-Fiction

  • Letters from London (Picador
    Picador (imprint)
    Picador is an imprint of Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom and Australia and of Macmillan Publishing in the United States. Both companies are owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group....

    , London, 1995) – journalism from The New Yorker
    The New Yorker
    The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...

    , ISBN 0-330-34116-2
  • Cross Channel (1996) – stories
  • Something to Declare (2002) – essays
  • The Pedant in the Kitchen (2003) – journalism on cooking
  • The Lemon Table (2004) – stories
  • Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008) – memoir
  • Pulse (2011) – stories

Works as Dan Kavanagh

  • Duffy (1980)
  • Fiddle City (1981)
  • Putting the Boot In (1985)
  • Going to the Dogs (1987)

About Barnes

  • Peter Childs, Julian Barnes (Contemporary British Novelists), Manchester University Press (2011)
  • Sebastian Groes & Peter Childs, eds. Julian Barnes (Contemporary Critical Perspectives), Continuum (2011)
  • Vanessa Guignery & Ryan Roberts, eds. Conversations with Julian Barnes, University Press of Mississippi (2009)
  • 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)
  • Merritt Moseley, Understanding Julian Barnes, University of South Carolina Press (1997)

See also

  • Edward Pygge
    Edward Pygge
    Edward Pygge was a pseudonym used by Ian Hamilton, John Fuller, Clive James, Russell Davies and Julian Barnes.Hamilton invented the name, and he and James used it...

    , a pseudonym used by Barnes
  • Eastwick
    Eastwick (Metroland)
    Eastwick was a fictional suburb on the outer reaches of the London Underground’s Metropolitan line in Julian Barnes’ novel Metroland. This book, written in 1980, recalled adolescence in the early 1960s.-Features of Eastwick:...

    , fictional location in Metroland

External links