Julian Barnes

"A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich -- Julian Barnes's first novel since his best-selling, Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending. 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, shot dead on the spot), he reflects...

"From the Man Booker Prize-winning author ..., a novel about a young man on the cusp of adulthood and a woman who has long been there, a love story shot through with sheer beauty, profound sadness, and deep truth. Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This...

"I don't believe in God, but I miss him." So begins this book, which is 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...

"An extraordinary collection-- hawk-eyed and understanding-- from the Booker Prize-winning, best-selling author of The Sense of an Ending and Levels of Life. As Julian Barnes explains: "Flaubert believed that...great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when we said nothing at all in front of a painting ... But it is a rare picture that stuns, or argues, us into silence. And if one does, it is...

Growing up in the sixties, Chris and Toni face the sexual longings of adolescence, find adulthood in Paris, and return home to join adult society.

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.

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 s In his latest novel, Julian Barnes, author of Talking It Over and A History...

Die erste Liebe hat lebenslange Konsequenzen, aber davon hat Paul im Alter von neunzehn keine Ahnung. Mit neunzehn ist er stolz, dass seine Liebe zur verheirateten, fast dreißig Jahre älteren Susan die gesellschaftlichen Konventionen sprengt. Er ist sich ganz sicher, in Susan die Frau fürs Leben gefunden zu haben, alles andere ist nebensächlich. Erst mit zunehmendem Alter wird Paul klar, dass die Anforderungen, die die Liebe an ihn stellt, größer...