Julian Barnes

Julian Patrick Barnes

Barnes as Francophile and Francophone in Bernard Pivot's Double je (France 2, March 2005)
Pseudonym:	Dan Kavanagh (crime fiction), Edward Pygge
Born:	19 January 1946 (1946--) (age 61) Leicester, United Kingdom
Occupation:	Novelist
Nationality:	United Kingdom
Genres:	Fictional prose
Influences:	Gustave Flaubert, Frank O'Connor
Website:	Official Website of Julian Barnes

Julian Patrick Barnes (born January 19, 1946 in Leicester, England) is a contemporary English writer of postmodernism in literature. 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 Merton 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 lives in London with his wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh.

Career

Barnes is a devoted Francophile and his writing reflects his long standing immersion in French literary culture. 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 for sexual awakening. 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 tries to rationalise his wife's suicide by focusing obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert, and a stuffed parrot that reputedly sat on his writing desk. 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 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.

Barnes reverted after that to smaller scale novels. In 1991, he published Talking it Over a contemporary love triangle, told in a he said/she said perspective with different characters reflecting over common events.

Works (novels unless otherwise indicated)

Arthur & George (2005), 2006 Vintage paperback edition

• Metroland (1980)
• Before She Met Me (1982)
• Flaubert's Parrot (1984)
• Staring at the Sun (1986)
• A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989)
• Talking it Over (1991)
• The Porcupine (1992)
• Letters from London (Picador, London, 1995) — journalism from The New Yorker, ISBN 0-330-34116-2
• Cross Channel (1996) — stories
• England, England (1998)
• Love, Etc. (2000)
• Something to Declare (2002) — essays
• The Pedant in the Kitchen (2003) — journalism on cooking
• The Lemon Table (2004) — stories
• Arthur & George (2005)

Works as Dan Kavanagh

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

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)

See also

• Edward Pygge, a pseudonym used by Barnes
• Eastwick, fictional location in Metroland

External links

• Official Website of Julian Barnes
• Official Website of Dan Kavanagh (pseudonym)
• British Council site
• Publisher's Website - includes facts about Barnes and Arthur & George
• Guardian Books "Author Page" - with profile and links to further articles.
• 1991 interview with Julian Barnes by Don Swaim at Wired for Books
• Julian Barnes at www.contemporarywriters.com
• Julian Barnes at the Internet Book List
• Interview on BBC HARDtalk Extra programme - broadcast on 22nd September, 2006
• Audio interview from Writing Lab on open2.net

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