by NRB | 5 Nov 2019 | Non-fiction |
In The Man in the Red Coat Julian Barnes has created both a biography and a portrait of the Belle Epoque. The man of the title is Samuel Pozzi, a fashionable, innovative and brilliant Parisian surgeon and gynecologist, a lover, a collector of beautiful objects – and...
by NRB | 22 Nov 2018 | Fiction |
Barnes has made the leap across time, culture, language and artform to believably invoke the thoughts of a brilliant but troubled Soviet composer. A composer, famous even beyond the razor-wire girdling the border of the Soviet Union, receives a bad review in Pravda,...
by NRB | 1 Mar 2018 | Fiction |
The latest novel by Booker-winner Julian Barnes shares resonances with The Sense of an Ending. Some time in the 1980s I read Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes. I loved it so much that not only did I give copies to several friends, but my own paperback fell...
by NRB | 23 Feb 2017 | Fiction |
De Botton’s novel about relationships and keeping love alive comes with an inbuilt commentary from the author. The Course of Love has been touted as the long-awaited sequel to Alain de Botton’s debut novel Essays in Love, which was first published in 1993. In...