Julian Barnes Books

I wanted the first chapter to be an overt mischievous act against the sanctity of sacred history. I retold the story of Noah’s Ark through the eyes of a woodworm—a low creature, despised and disposable. Through this voice I could question divine justice without blasphemy, challenge human arrogance w...

From A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

Moving from myth to modernity, the second chapter plunges us into a crisis aboard a cruise ship seized by terrorists. Here, violence and fear are religious motifs all over again—there is no flood, yet human cruelty is just as overwhelming. I wanted the story to mirror the flood’s chaos, but stripped...

From A History of the World in 10½ Chapters

George Edalji’s story begins in the quiet village of Great Wyrley, where his father, the Reverend Shapurji Edalji, an Indian convert to Christianity, serves as vicar. His mother, Charlotte, is Scottish. Their marriage—an unlikely crossing of cultural frontiers—is met with suspicion by the villagers,...

From Arthur & George

If George is shaped by restraint, Arthur Conan Doyle is his opposite: expansive, confident, almost romantic in his certainties. Born to modest Irish Catholic parents, Doyle rises through medical school in Edinburgh and finds worldly success through his fiction. With Sherlock Holmes he creates not on...

From Arthur & George

When Braithwaite travels to Rouen, he carries not only guidebooks but a burden of loneliness and the restless need to make sense of things. In this city of Flaubert’s birth and death, history has hardened into displays and plaques, and yet it still flickers with uncertainties. Two museums proudly cl...

From Flaubert’s Parrot

Braithwaite’s search becomes a collage of facts, guesses, and imagination. He reads Flaubert’s letters, tracks his journeys through Egypt and Normandy, and reconstructs his friendships—with Louise Colet, George Sand, and others—through words preserved but emotions erased. In each fragment, Braithwai...

From Flaubert’s Parrot