A memoir on mortality as only Julian Barnes can write it, one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction. If the fear of death is "the most rational thing in the world," how does one contend with it? An atheist at twenty and an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various...

"This beautiful, spare novel of platonic unrequited love springs into being around the singular character of the stoic, exacting Professor Elizabeth Finch. Neil, the narrator, takes her class on Culture and Civilization, taught not for undergraduates but for adults of all ages; we are drawn into his intellectual crush on this private, withholding yet commanding woman. While other personal relationships and even his family drift from Neil's grasp,...

Imagine an England where all the pubs are quaint, where the Windsors behave themselves (mostly), where the cliffs of Dover are actually white, and where Robin Hood and his merry men really are merry. This is precisely what visionary tycoon, Sir Jack Pitman, seeks to accomplish on the Isle of Wight, a "destination" where tourists can find replicas of Big Ben (half size), Princess Di's grave, and even Harrod's (conveniently located inside the tower...

Presents meditations on the author's life from the nineteenth-century events that shaped his world to his transformative experiences with ballooning, photography, love, and loss.

Dmitri Schostakowitsch gehört zu den renommiertesten Komponisten seines Landes, als Stalin der Aufführung einer seiner Opern beiwohnt und schon in der Pause den Saal verlässt. Fortan gilt Schostakowitsch als zum Abschuss freigegebener Mann. Er entgeht der Säuberung, doch wie lebt es sich als Künstler unter ständiger Beobachtung? In welchem Verhältnis stehen Kunst und Unterdrückung, Diktatur und Kreativität zueinander, und ist es verwerflich,...

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.

Eine Reise durch das Paris der Belle Epoque Julian Barnes lernte Dr. Samuel Pozzi (1846-1918) kennen, als er das Porträt "Mann im roten Rock" von John Sargent Singer betrachtete. Es zeigt den Arztpionier, Freigeist und intellektuellen Wissenschaftler, der seiner Zeit weit voraus war. Kenntnisreich und elegant beschreibt Julian Barnes das schillernde Leben Dr. Pozzis und entwirft das Bild einer Ära, die wir heute Belle Epoque nennen und die neben...

In May 1937, a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the 'Big House. ' Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now, and few who are taken to ever return.

The Pedant in the Kitchen is a perfect comfort for anyone who has ever been defeated by a cookbook. The Pedant's ambition is simple. He wants to cook tasty, nutritious food; he wants not to poison his friends; and he wants to expand, slowly and with pleasure, his culinary repertoire

Als Finn Adrian in die Klasse von Tony Webster kommt, schließen die beiden Jungen schnell Freundschaft. Sex und Bücher sind die Hauptthemen, mit denen sie sich befassen, und Tony hat das Gefühl, dass Adrian in allem etwas klüger ist als er. Auch später, nach der Schulzeit, bleiben die beiden in Kontakt. Bis die Freundschaft ein jähes Ende findet. Vierzig Jahre später, Tony hat eine Ehe, eine gütliche Trennung und eine Berufskarriere hinter...