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Julian Barnes

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Julian Patrick Barnes
Pen nameDan Kavanagh (crime fiction), Edward Pygge, Basil Seal
OccupationNovelist
NationalityUnited Kingdom
GenreFiction
Website
http://www.julianbarnes.com

Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946[1] 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[2].

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, based on Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov.[3]

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

Nominations

About Barnes

  • Conversations with Julian Barnes, Eds. Vanessa Guignery and Ryan Roberts, 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

References

  1. ^ The Times 19 January 2009, Retrieved 2010-01-09
  2. ^ http://www.thebookseller.com/news/69240-united-agent-pat-kavanagh-dies.html
  3. ^ http://www.bookmunch.co.uk/view.php?id=612
  4. ^ "The 10 Best Books of 2008". New York Times. 3 December 2008.
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