Julian Barnes, página 2 de 11

"Ce n''était que la fin octobre, mais Phil avait tenu à allumer un feu avec quelques bûches de pommier qu''ils avaient apportées de la campagne. Nous avions parlé de bonus de banquiers et des problèm

PREMI MAN BOOKER 2011 (A LA MILLOR NOVEL·LA PUBLICADA A LA COMMONWEALTH I IRLANDA) LA NOVEL·LA DE L'ANY Tony Webster és ara un jubilat de vida tranquil·la, divorciat amistosament, amb una filla i aparentment en pau amb la seva vida. Pero quan rebi una carta d'un bufet d'advocats, es veura abocat a revisar el seu passat, especialment els seus anys adolescents. Just abans d'anar a la universitat, el seu grup d'amics es va ampliar amb l'Adrian Finn, el mes serios i intel·ligent de tots quatre. Amb fam de sexe i de llibres, sense noies, van viure un any molt intens i van jurar ser amics per sempre. Ara, passats mes de quaranta anys, Tony Webster s'adona que molts fets potser no van passar com els havia recordat. Perque la memoria es imperfecta i pot fer aflorar sorpreses. I, fins i tot, obligar-te a reinterpretar tota una vida. Ho te tot per ser un classic de la literatura anglesa. Esta exquisidament escrit, subtilment traçat i revela noves profunditats en cada lectura. (Stella Rimington, presidenta del jurat del Premi Man Booker) Breu pero magistral. (...) Te un efecte pertorbador. Que no us n'enganyi la brevetat. El seu misteri esta tan profundament entreteixit com el mes antic dels records. (Anita Brookner) Una petita obra mestra. (_New York Journal of Books_) Un llibre excel·lent, habilment traçat, audaçment concebut, ple d'una fosca visio pel que fa a l'envelliment i la memoria. (...) Barnes hi ha assolit alguna cosa de ressonancia universal. (_The Guardian_) Cuinada a foc lent, mesurada i plena de suspens, aquesta novel·la aconsegueix que cada frase, astutament treballada, compti. I al final s'alcen les flames. (_The Independent_)

«UNA OBRA MESTRA. UNA PASSEJADA ENLLUERNADORA PELS TEMES FAVORITS DE JULIAN BARNES: LA LITERATURA, LA MÚSICA, FRANÇA, PERÒ TAMBÉ DÉU, LA RELIGIÓ I LA MORT. UN LLIBRE ADMIRABLEMENT CONSTRUÏT, MERAVELL

Deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with a sense of the past and a sense of abroad; with France and England, life and art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, and aesthetics and redcurrant jam. "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.

" Arthur est en retard pour son rendez-vous avec George Edalji au Grand Hotel, Charing Cross ; des affaires à régler à sa banque l''ont retenu plus longtemps que prévu. Il entre d''un pas vif dans le

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Beginning with an unlikely stowaway's account of life on board Noah's Ark, A History of the World in 10 Chapters presents a surprising and subversive fictional-history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they are revisited in on other centuries and other climes - by a Victorian spinster mourning her father, by an American astronaut on an obsessive personal mission. We journey to the Titanic, to the Amazon, to the raft of the Medusa, and to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin...

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 2011 and a Sunday Times bestseller - this is a brilliant novel from a writer at the very height of his powers.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.

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 Gericaults The Raft of the Medusa in his 1989 novel A History of the World in 10 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, Fantin-Latour, Cezanne, Degas, Redon, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Braque, Magritte, Oldenburg, Howard Hodgkin and Lucian Freud.

A fictional history of the world in which stories echo each other as themes deepen and images recur. The author also wrote "Metroland" for which he won the 1981 Somerset Maughan Award and "Flaubert's Parrot" which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Istorio bakarra honetan, Julian Barnes bikote baten zirrikituetan sartzen da . Iraun al dezake maitasun batek betiko, baita mingarria bada ere? Noraino hel daiteke gizartearen konbentzioekin bat ez datorren bikote bat? Batez ere bikotekideen artean adin ezberdintasun handia badago? Maitasunaren alde argiak alde iluna ere izan ohi du itsatsita. Elkarbizitzaren herdoila. Lehenago edo geroago gezurrak heltzen dira. Harremanari eusten diote bikotekideek, baina agian utzikeriagatik edo koldarkeriagatik. Askatzea izan daiteke irtenbidea. Baina inoiz aska al zaitezke benetan istorio bakar horretaz? Barnesen ohiko gaiak aurkituko ditu irakurleak nobela honetan: maitasuna, bizitzaren zentzua, gaztetasuna eta zahartzaroa, belaunaldien arteko talka, oroimena... Barnesek berezkoa duen zigiluarekin gainera: ironia, sakontasuna eta zehaztasuna.

Un premier amour détermine une vie pour toujours : c’est ce que j’ai découvert au fil des ans. Il n’occupe pas forcément un rang supérieur à celui des amours ultérieures, mais elles seront toujours a

As every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of White. Grotesque, visionary tycoon Sir Jack Pitman takes the saying literally and does exactly that. He constructs on the island 'The Project', a vast heritage centre containing everything 'English', from More... Big Ben to Stonehenge, from Manchester United to the white Cliffs of Dover. The project is monstrous, risky, and vastly successful. In fact, it gradually begins to rival 'Old' England and even threatens to supersede it...One of Barnes's finest and funniest novels, England, England calls into question the idea of replicas, truth vs. fiction, reality vs. art, nationhood, myth-making, and self-exploration...

Condamné pour le meurtre d'un cheval, George Edalji, jeune avoué d'origine parisienne, est emprisonné puis relâché sans avoir été innocenté. Son teint mat et sa parfaite intégration sociale dérangent l'Angleterre bien-pensante de ce début de XXe siècle. Fragile, effacé maladroit et démuni, il va faire appel à Arthur Conan Doyle, alors un des hommes les plus célèbres d'Angleterre, le créateur de Sherlock Holmes... Extraordinaire tableau de la société victorienne, ce roman. inspiré d'un fait réel qui avait divisé l'Angleterre comme en France l'affaire Dreyfus, est aussi le plus passionnant et le plus haletant des thrillers.

''I don''t believe in God, but I miss Him''. Julian Barnes'' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard. Though he warns us that ''this is not my autobiography'', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant writers. When Angela Carter reviewed Barnes'' first novel, ''Metroland'', she praised the mature way he wrote about death. Now, nearly thirty years later, he returns to the subject in a wise , funny and constantly surprising book, which defies category and classification - except as Barnesian.

Christopher and Toni found in each other the perfect companion for that universal adolescent pastime: smirking at the world as you find it. In between training as flaneurs and the grind of school they cast a cynical eye over their various dislikes: parents with their lives of spotless emptiness, Third Division (North) football teams, God, commuters and girls, and the inhabitants of Metroland, the strip of suburban dormitory Christopher calls home. Longing for real life to begin, we follow Christopher to Paris in time for les evenements of 1968, only to miss it all in a haze of sex, French theatre and first love, leading, to Toni's disappointment, back to Metroland.

Graham Hendrick, an historian, has left his wife Barbara for the vivacious Ann, and is more than pleased with his new life. Until, that is, the day he discovers Ann's celluloid past as a mediocre film actress. Soon Graham is pouncing on old clues, examining her books for inscriptions from past lovers, frequenting cinemas and poring over the bad movies she appeared in. It's not that he blames Anne for having a past before they met, but history has always mattered to him...

Shy, sensible banker Stuart has trouble with women; that is, until a fortuitous singles night, where he meets Gillian, a picture restorer recovering from a destructive affair. Stuart''s best friend Oliver is his complete opposite - a language teacher who ''talks like a dictionary'', brash and feckless. Shy, sensible banker Stuart has trouble with women; that is, until a fortuitous singles night, where he meets Gillian, a picture restorer recovering from a destructive affair. Stuart''s best friend Oliver is his complete opposite - a language teacher who ''talks like a dictionary'', brash and feckless. Soon Stuart and Gillian are married, but it is not long before a tentative friendship between the three evolves into something far different. Talking it Over is a brilliant and intimate account of love''s vicissitudes. It begins as a comedy of misunderstanding, then slowly darkens and deepens, drawing us compellingly into the quagmires of the heart.