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A wise, heartfelt and powerful new novel from Julian Barnes - a book that is a balm for our times with an extraordinary woman at its heart.
We'd like to introduce you to Elizabeth Finch. We invite you to take her course in Culture and Civilisation. She will change the way you see the world.
Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an inspiration - always rigorous, always thoughtful. With measured empathy, she guided her students to develop meaningful ideas and to discover their centres of seriousness.
As Neil, a former student, unpacks Elizabeth's notebooks, and remembers her uniquely inquisitive mind, her passion for reason resonates through the years. Her ideas unlock the philosophies of the past, and explore key events that show us how to make sense of our lives today. And underpinning them all is the story of J - Julian the Apostate, her historical soulmate and fellow challenger to the institutional and monotheistic thinking that has always threatened to divide us.
This is more than a novel. It's a loving tribute to philosophy, a careful evaluation of history, an invitation to think for ourselves. It's a moment to reflect and to gently explore our own theories and assumptions. It is truly a balm for our times.
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Journal 1887-1910 (Paperback)
Jules Renard; Translated by Theo Cuffe; Introduction by Julian Barnes
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R513
R429
Discovery Miles 4 290
Save R84 (16%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession
with the great French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert. As
Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert
borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his
novels, we learn an enormous amount about the writer's work,
family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But we
also gradually come to learn some important and shocking details
about Geoffrey himself.
'BARNES'S MASTERPIECE' - OBSERVER 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 the Big House ever return. 'Stunning'
Sunday Times 'A profound meditation on power and the relationship
of art and power... It is a masterpiece of sympathetic
understanding... I don't think Barnes has written a finer, more
truthful or more profound book' Scotsman 'A tour de force by a
master novelist at the top of his game' Daily Express
Amours de Voyage (1849) is a novel in verse and is arranged in five
cantos, or chapters, as a sequence of letters. It is about a group
of English travellers in Italy: Claude, and the Trevellyn family,
are caught up in the 1849 political turmoil. The poem mixes the
political ('Sweet it may be, and decorous, perhaps, for the country
to die; but,/On the whole, we conclude the Romans won't do it, and
I sha'n't') and the personal ('After all, do I know that I really
cared so about her?/Do whatever I will, I cannot call up her
image'). The political is important - hence the Persephone edition
reproduces nine London Illustrated News drawings of the battlefront
- but the personal dilemmas are the crucial ones. Claude, about to
declare himself, retreats, then regrets his failure to speak. It is
this retreat, his scruples and fastidiousness, that, like a
conventional novel, is the core of Amours de Voyage. The poem thus
contributed something important to the modern sensibility; it is a
portrait of an anti-hero; it is about love and marriage (the
difficulties of); and it is about Italy. Clough wrote to his
mother: 'St Peter's disappoints me: the stone of which it is made
is a poor plastery material; and indeed, Rome in general might be
called a rubbishy place - The weather has not been very brilliant.'
As Julian Barnes points out in his new Persephone Preface: 'If you
want a one-word introduction to the tone, sensibility and modernity
of Arthur Hugh Clough, you have it in that single, italicised (by
him, not me) word: rubbishy.' Clough was unimpressed by Rome and so
is his hero, Claude, 'a very unGrand Tourist'. 'What his friend
Arnold perceived to be the weaknesses of Clough's poetry,'
continues Julian Barnes, 'are precisely what over time have come to
seem its strengths - a prosey colloquiality which at times verges
on awkwardness, a preference for honesty and sarcasm over suavity
and tact, a direct criticism of modern life, a naming of things as
themselves. It is absolutely contemporary...It is also a highly
contemplative and argumentative poem, about history, civilisation
and the individual's duty to act. And it is, as the title tells us,
a love story - or, this being Clough, a sort of modern, near-miss,
almost-but-not-quite love story ( I am in love you say; I do not
think so, exactlyA") with mismatching, misunderstanding, tortuous
self- searching, and a mad, hopeful, hopeless pursuit leading us to
a kind of ending.'
'A masterpiece... I would urge you to read - and re-read ' Daily
Telegraph **Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011** Tony
Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry
and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form
together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe
Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more
intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony
is retired. He's had a career and a single marriage, a calm
divorce. He's certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory,
though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a
lawyer's letter is about to prove. Now a major film
The Sunday Times Bestseller from the Winner of the Booker Prize She
will change the way you see the world . . . 'I'll remember
Elizabeth Finch when most other characters I've met this year have
faded' The Times Elizabeth Finch was a teacher, a thinker, an
inspiration. Neil is just one of many who fell under her spell
during his time in her class. Tasked with unpacking her notebooks
after her death, Neil encounters once again Elizabeth's astonishing
ideas on the past and on how to make sense of the present. But
Elizabeth was much more than a scholar. Her secrets are waiting to
be revealed . . . and will change Neil's view of the world forever.
'Enthralling . . . A connoisseur and master of irony himself,
[Barnes] fills this book with instances of its exhilarating power'
Sunday Times 'A lyrical, thoughtful and intriguing exploration of
love, grief and the collective myths of history' Booklist
**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** Would you rather love the more, and
suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I
think, finally, the only real question. First love has lifelong
consequences, but Paul doesn't know anything about that at
nineteen. At nineteen, he's proud of the fact his relationship
flies in the face of social convention. As he grows older, the
demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could
possibly have foreseen. Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply
moving novel by one of fiction's greatest mappers of the human
heart.
Now a major film starring Academy Award nominees Jim Broadbent
(Iris) and Charlotte Rampling (45 Years) Winner of the Man Booker
Prize for Fiction in 2011 Tony Webster and his clique first met
Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would
navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in
affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little
more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they
all swore to stay friends for life. Now Tony is retired. He's had a
career and a single marriage, a calm divorce. He's certainly never
tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always
throw up surprises, as a lawyer's letter is about to prove.
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2020* 'A bravura
performance, highly entertaining' Evening Standard The Booker
Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich,
witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story of the
pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi. In the summer of 1885, three
Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was a
Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner, who four
years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's
greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi, society doctor,
pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker - a scientific man with a
famously complicated private life. Pozzi's life played out against
the backdrop of the Parisian Belle Epoque. The beautiful age of
glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical,
narcissistic, decadent and violent, with more parallels to our own
age than we might imagine. **SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE
2019**
When it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this
disarmingly witty book, Julian Barnes confronts our unending
obsession with the end. He reflects on what it means to miss God,
whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually
turn into our parents. Barnes is the perfect guide to the weirdness
of the only thing that binds us all. Selected from the book Nothing
to be Frightened Of by Julian Barnes VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS.
BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world's
greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the
Vintage Minis series: Calm by Tim Parks Drinking by John Cheever
Babies by Anne Enright Psychedelics by Aldous Huxley
You put together two things that have not been put together before.
And the world is changed... In Levels of Life Julian Barnes gives
us Nadar, the pioneer balloonist and aerial photographer; he gives
us Colonel Fred Burnaby, reluctant adorer of the extravagant Sarah
Bernhardt; then, finally, he gives us the story of his own grief,
unflinchingly observed. This is a book of intense honesty and
insight; it is at once a celebration of love and a profound
examination of sorrow. **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF
THE 21st CENTURY**
'As a mayor, I am responsible for the upkeep of rural roads; as
poet, I prefer to see them neglected.' Jules Renard was a French
literary figure of the late nineteenth century. Not a Parisian but
a committed countryman, he was elected mayor in 1904 of the tiny
village of Citry-le-Mines in a remote part of northern Burgundy. He
had the soul of a rustic bourgeois but the ambition of a
metropolitan, and his wife's money allowed him to move in elevated
circles, though he seemed an awkward customer, a badger, and looked
like one. He wrote fiction, journalism and drama, very
successfully, but the Journal is Renard's masterpiece, the least
categorizable work of the French fin de siecle. The Journal
constitutes a profusion of entries, without stitching or pattern:
mordant reflections on style, literature and theatre; portraits of
family, friends and the Parisian literary scene;
quasi-ethnographical observations on village life and notations of
the natural world which are unlike anything except themselves.
Samuel Beckett spoke of Renard in the same breath as Proust and
Celine, wrote of the Journal that 'for me it is as inexhaustible as
Boswell ' and believed his style was learnt from despair. Gide said
the Journal was 'not a river but a distillery'. Sartre wrote that
'He invented the literature of silence'. But above all it is a
moving and splintery piece of self-scrutiny. Julian Barnes has
admired the Journal for many years and has made this new selection
from the twelve hundred page Pleiade edition. Theo Cuffe's
translation will help bring this fierce judge of human foibles to a
new generation of readers.
**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** Would you rather love the more, and
suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I
think, finally, the only real question. First love has lifelong
consequences, but Paul doesn't know anything about that at
nineteen. At nineteen, he's proud of the fact his relationship
flies in the face of social convention. As he grows older, the
demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could
possibly have foreseen. Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply
moving novel by one of Britain's greatest mappers of the human
heart.
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Innocence (Paperback, Reissue)
Penelope Fitzgerald; Introduction by Julian Barnes
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R272
R244
Discovery Miles 2 440
Save R28 (10%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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A new edition of the Booker Prize winner Penelope Fitzgerald's
best-loved novel of romance in post-war Italy, with a new
introduction by Julian Barnes. The Ridolfis are a Florentine family
of long lineage and little money. It is 1955, and the family, like
its decrepit villa and farm, has seen better days. Only
eighteen-year-old Chiara shows anything like vitality. Chiara has
set her heart on Salvatore, a young and brilliant doctor who
resolved long ago to be emotionally dependent on no one. Faced with
this, she calls on her English girlfriend Barney to help her make
the impossible match...
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Inglaterra, Inglaterra
Julian Barnes
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R430
R351
Discovery Miles 3 510
Save R79 (18%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction Flaubert's Parrot
deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with our sense of
the past and our sense of abroad; with France and England, life and
art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, aesthetics and
redcurrant jam; and with its enigmatic narrator, a retired English
doctor, whose life and secrets are slowly revealed. A compelling
weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot
is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a
tour de force of seductive originality.
The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes
us on a rich, witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story
of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi. In the summer of 1885,
three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was
a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner with an
Italian name, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of
John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. The three men's lives
play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. The
beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly
side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, a time of
rampant prejudice and blood-and-soil nativism, with more parallels
to our own age than we might imagine. Our guide through this world
is Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and
free-thinker, a rational and scientific man with a famously
complicated private life. Witty, surprising and deeply researched,
The Man in the Red Coat illuminates the fruitful and longstanding
exchange of ideas between Britain and France, and makes a
compelling case for keeping that exchange alive.
In these seventeen essays (and one short story) the 2011 Man Booker
Prize winner examines British, French and American writers who have
meant most to him, as well as the cross-currents and overlappings
of their different cultures. From the deceptiveness of Penelope
Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling's view of
France to the French view of Kipling, from the many translations of
Madame Bovary to the fabulations of Ford Madox Ford, from the
National Treasure Status of George Orwell to the despair of Michel
Houellebecq, Julian Barnes considers what fiction is, and what it
can do. As he writes in his preface, 'Novels tell us the most truth
about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how
we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.' When his Letters from
London came out in 1995, the Financial Times called him 'our best
essayist'. This wise and deft collection confirms that judgment.
The first authorised selected collection of the twentieth-century's
most influential short story writer. SELECTED AND INTRODUCED BY
JULIAN BARNES Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book
Award, John Cheever - variously referred to as 'Ovid in Ossining'
and the 'Chekhov of the suburbs' - forever altered the landscape of
contemporary literature. In a career that spanned nearly fifty
years, his short stories, often published in the New Yorker, gave
voice to the repressed desires and smouldering disappointments of
1950s America as it teetered on the edge of spiritual awakening and
sexual liberation in the ensuing Sixties. Up until now, John
Cheever's stories have only been available in Collected Stories,
but with Julian Barnes' selection we have the first fully
authorised introduction to Cheever's work. Satirical, fantastical,
sad and transcendent, these are stories that speak directly to the
heart of human experience, and remain a testament to the wit and
vision of one of the most important and influential short story
writers of the twentieth century.
The updated edition of Julian Barnes' best-loved writing on art,
with seven new exquisite illustrated essays 'Flaubert believed that
it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and
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 we are very far from reaching that
state. We remain incorrigibly verbal creatures who love to explain
things, to form opinions, to argue... It is a rare picture which
stuns, or argues, us into silence. And if one does, it is only a
short time before we want to explain and understand the very
silence into which we have been plunged.' Julian Barnes began
writing about art with a chapter on Gericault's The Raft of the
Medusa in his 1989 novel A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters.
Since then he has written a series of remarkable essays, chiefly
about French artists, which trace the story of how art made its way
from Romanticism to Realism and into Modernism. Fully illustrated
in colour throughout, Keeping an Eye Open contains Barnes' essays
on Gericault, Delacroix, Courbet, Manet, Morisot, Fantin-Latour,
Cezanne, Degas, Cassatt, Redon, Van Gogh, the legendary critic
Huysmans, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Braque, Magritte,
Oldenburg, Howard Hodgkin and Lucian Freud. It also offers new
perspectives on the fruitful relationship between writers and
artists, and on the rivalry among Russian collectors of French art
in the late 19th century. 'A typically elegant and absorbing book
by one of the greatest contemporary English writers.' Guardian
*Books of the Year* 'Gave me a new confidence in how to understand
and, more importantly, enjoy wandering around an exhibition.'
Mariella Frostrup 'My book of the year.' Natalie Haynes,
Independent
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