NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

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 arguments for, against, and with God, and at his own bloodline, which has become, following his parents' death, another realm of mystery.

Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly hilarious, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a riveting display of how this supremely gifted writer goes about his business and a highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis.

The most generous one-volume collection ever published of short stories, autobiographical writings,poetry, and essays by the writer Yeats called “Ireland’s Chekhov.”

Selected and arranged thematically by Julian Barnes, the rich mix of writings in The Best of Frank O’Connor starts off with his most famous short story, “Guests of the Nation,” set during the Irish War of Independence; chronicles his childhood with an alcoholic father and protective mother; and traces his literary influences in brilliant essays on Joyce and Yeats. O’Connor’s wonderfully polyphonic tales of family, friendship, and rivalry are set beside those that bring to life forgotten souls on the fringes of society. O’Connor’s writings about Ireland vividly evoke the land he called home, while other stories probe the hardships and rewards of Irish emigration. Finally, we see O’Connor grappling, in both fiction and memoir, with the largest questions of religion and belief.

The Best of Frank O’Connor is a literary monument to a truly great writer.

A Great Wyrley, un piccolo villaggio inglese, qualcuno uccide cavalli e bestiame e scrive lettere anonime. Annunciando il sacrificio di venti giovinette. Bisogna trovare un colpevole, e George Edalji, avvocato, figlio del parroco, è il principale sospetto. Forse perché è diverso? Suo padre è un parsi, arrivato dall'India e convertito all'anglicanesimo. George è condannato. La campagna che proclama la sua innocenza giunge però alle orecchie di Arthur Conan Doyle, che decide di indagare sul caso. Arthur è il contrario del grigio George, che vuole solo essere inglese e che credendo nella legge si rassegna a patire anni di lavori forzati. Arthur è uno scrittore famoso, un uomo moderno, sportivo e dalla mente aperta, attratto dallo spiritismo. Non sarà Sherlock Holmes a riabilitare George, ma il maturo e stanco Sir Conan Doyle, che giocando la parte dell'investigatore trarrà dalle circostanze anche la forza per ricominciare a vivere.

As boys, George, the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, living in shabby genteel Edinburgh, find themselves in a vast and complex world at the heart of the British Empire. Years later—one struggling with his identity in a world hostile to his ancestry, the other creating the world's most famous detective while in love with a woman who is not his wife–their fates become inextricably connected.

In Arthur & George, Julian Barnes explores the grand tapestry of late-Victorian Britain to create his most intriguing and engrossing novel yet.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and a Richard & Judy Book Club choice, this accessible and profound novel is now published in paperback. Centring on a Victorian }cause celebre{ Barnes brings the period, the case and the inner lives of the

In his widely acclaimed new collection of stories, Julian Barnes addresses what is perhaps the most poignant aspect of the human condition: growing old.

The characters in The Lemon Table are facing the ends of their lives–some with bitter regret, others with resignation, and others still with defiant rage. Their circumstances are just as varied as their responses. In 19th-century Sweden, three brief conversations provide the basis for a lifetime of longing. In today's England, a retired army major heads into the city for his regimental dinner–and his annual appointment with a professional lady named Babs. Somewhere nearby, a devoted wife calms (or perhaps torments) her ailing husband by reading him recipes.
In stories brimming with life and our desire to hang on to it one way or another, Barnes proves himself by turns wise, funny, clever, and profound–a writer of astonishing powers of empathy and invention.

Richard Cobb (1917-1996) was born in Tunbridge Wells, the son of a minor civil servant, and educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford. A year spent in France between public school and college turned him into a committed Francophile, leading to an interest in French history. Cobb served unhappily in the British Army during the Second World War, after which he moved to France, where he stayed for many years, leading a Bohemian life while also conducting extensive research on the French Revolution in Parisian and provincial archives. He was particularly interested in documents that illuminated the lives and opinions of ordinary men and women and other people ordinarily overlooked by historians: lunatics, murderers, prostitutes, beggars, and members of the political fringe. In 1962, he became a Fellow of Balliol College; in 1973, he was appointed Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He continued, however, to spend as much time as he could in France, where he was made a member of the legion d'honneur. Cobb's many historical studies include The People's Armies and The Police and the People: French Popular Protest, 1789-1820. He also wrote a memoir, The End of the Line, as well as many articles about French life and literature.

Dopo essere stato dieci anni in America come brillante uomo d'affari, Stuart torna a Londra e decide di cercare la ex-moglie Gillian. La loro unione si era conclusa anni prima quando Oliver, il suo ex-migliore amico, gliel'aveva portata via. Ora che le ambizioni artistiche di Oliver sono svanite e il suo rapporto con Gillian vacilla, Stuart decide di insinuarsi nella vita della coppia, perché in fondo non ha mai smesso di amare la moglie e perché intende attuare un piano. Un mosaico di monologhi incrociati che raccontano vite sospese, frustrazioni, disincanti e rivalse.

Anyone who loves France (or just feels strongly about it), or has succumbed to the spell of Julian Barnes’s previous books, will be enraptured by this collection of essays on the country and its culture.

Barnes’s appreciation extends from France’s vanishing peasantry to its hyper-literate pop singers, from the gleeful iconoclasm of nouvelle vague cinema to the orgy of drugs and suffering that is the Tour de France. Above all, Barnes is an unparalleled connoisseur of French writing and writers. Here are the prolific and priapic Simenon, Baudelaire, Sand and Sartre, and several dazzling excursions on the prickly genius of Flaubert. Lively yet discriminating in its enthusiasm, seemingly infinite in its range of reference, and written in prose as stylish as haute couture, Something to Declare is an unadulterated joy.

Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Julian Barnes continues to reinvigorate the novel with his pyrotechnic verbal skill and playful manipulation of plot and character. In Love, etc. he uses all the surprising, sophisticated ingredients of a delightful farce to create a tragicomedy of human frailties and needs.

After spending a decade in America as a successful businessman, Stuart returns to London and decides to look up his ex-wife Gillian. Their relationship had ended years before when Stuart's witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. But now Stuart finds that the intervening years have left Oliver's artistic ambitions in ruins and his relationship with Gillian on less than solid footing. When Stuart begins to suspect that he may be able to undo the results of their betrayal, he resolves to act. Written as an intimate series of crosscutting monologues that allow each character to whisper their secrets and interpretations directly to the reader, Love, etc. is an unsettling examination of confessional culture and a profound refection on the power of perspective.

Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Julian Barnes continues to reinvigorate the novel with his pyrotechnic verbal skill and playful manipulation of plot and character. In Love, etc. he uses all the surprising, sophisticated ingredients of a delightful farce to create a tragicomedy of human frailties and needs.

After spending a decade in America as a successful businessman, Stuart returns to London and decides to look up his ex-wife Gillian. Their relationship had ended years before when Stuart's witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. But now Stuart finds that the intervening years have left Oliver's artistic ambitions in ruins and his relationship with Gillian on less than solid footing. When Stuart begins to suspect that he may be able to undo the results of their betrayal, he resolves to act. Written as an intimate series of crosscutting monologues that allow each character to whisper their secrets and interpretations directly to the reader, Love, etc. is an unsettling examination of confessional culture and a profound refection on the power of perspective.

Booker Prize Finalist

'Wickedly funny.' --The New York Times

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 of London).

Martha Cochrane, hired as one of  Sir Jack's resident 'no-people,' ably assists him in realizing his dream.  But when this land of make-believe gradually gets horribly and hilariously out of hand, Martha develops her own vision of the perfect England.  Julian Barnes delights us with a novel that is at once a philosophical inquiry, a burst of mischief, and a moving elegy about authenticity and nationality.

Sir Jack Pitman, un miliardario di dubbie origini, compra un'isola e vi ricostruisce il meglio dell'Inghilterra: i turisti possono ammirare il Big Ben la mattina, visitare Westminster di pomeriggio, recarsi a Stonehenge di sera... Pitman importa perfino delle attrazioni vive e vegete: la stessa famiglia reale, adescata con promesse sulla popolarità che potrebbe ricavarne, si ritrova a salutare la folla da Buckingham Palace, per quindici minuti al giorno, come da contratto. Attirati da questa finta Inghilterra in cui tutto funziona, presto i turisti internazionali snobbano quella vera, e gli inglesi cominciano a emigrare sull'isola, mentre l'Inghilterra originale perde prestigio e popolazione e ripiomba in un secondo Medioevo...

Stuart e Oliver. Due amici inseparabili, benché diversissimi di carattere. Il loro è un sodalizio di ferro, tutto procede nel migliore dei modi fino a quando Oliver si innamora di Gillian, la ragazza di Stuart. E mentre un'unione si spezza e un'altra si forma, i tre decidono di confessarsi raccontando se stessi e l'irreparabile caos che ha sconvolto le loro esistenze. Così, dalle voci narranti dei tre personaggi, scaturiscono tre differenti versioni di una stessa vicenda, un complesso mosaico di affetti frustrati, lealtà e piccoli inganni, tenerezze e trattenute passioni, momenti di sofferenza e di irresistibile humour, su cui domina un senso giocoso, ma anche disincantato e malinconico, della vita.

In his first collection of short stories, Barnes explores the narrow body of water containing the vast sea of prejudice and misapprehension which lies between England and France with acuity humor, and compassion. For whether Barnes's English characters come to France as conquerors or hostages, laborers, athletes, or aesthetes, what they discover, alongside rich food and barbarous sexual and religious practices, is their own ineradicable Englishness. The ten stories that make up Cross Channel introduce us to a plethora of intriguing, original, and sometimes ill-fated characters. Elegantly conceived and seductively written, Cross Channel is further evidence of Barnes's wizardry.

In dieci capitoli (e mezzo) una originale storia del mondo e dell'umanità reinventata con ironia dallo scrittore inglese, che viene ora ad affiancare le presenze di McEwan, Amis Byatt. In un continuo rimbalzare di tempi, generi, situazioni, Barnes ripercorre le grandezze e le follie della storia umana con un occhio divertito e disincantato. Unico fattore positivo, nell'inseguirsi di fanatismi e naufragi, la forza unificante dell'amore, così fragile e così invincibile.

With brilliant wit, idiosyncratic intelligence, and a bold grasp of intricate political realities, the celebrated author of Flaubert's Parrot turns his satiric glance homeward to England, in a sparkling collection of essays that illustrates the infinite variety of contemporary London life.

In the course of what is, superficially, an ordinary life, whose dates span the 1920s to the year 2021, Jean Serjeant, a woman of exceptional curiosity, muses on diverse questions, great and small

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 seem to be self-evident. But, as brilliantly imagined by Barnes, the trial of this cunning and unrepentant dictator illuminates the shadowy frontier between the rusted myths of the Communist past and a capitalist future in which everything is up for grabs.