Julian Barnes is the author of fourteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Booker Prize, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and five works of non-fiction, including Nothing to Be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life. He was awarded the David Cohen Prize for lifetime contribution to literature in 2011, and the Légion d'honneur in 2017.

"Few writers think and talk so beguilingly. This book is wonderfully funny. And intelligent. And moving" Independent on Sunday "Quicksilver clever and allusive" The Times "Scintillating... It's funny, quick on the draw, and knows when to soften the gaze. It reads so smoothly, the pages seem to flip themselves" Observer "A writer of rare intelligence. He catches the detail of contemporary life with an uncanny forensic skill... He is, as always, a superb ironist, a connoisseur of middling, muddling, modern England" London Review of Books "A wonderfully wistful and funny novel" Daily Telegraph

Julian Barnes is the author of fourteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Booker Prize, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and five works of non-fiction, including Nothing to Be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life. He was awarded the David Cohen Prize for lifetime contribution to literature in 2011, and the Légion d'honneur in 2017.

"Few writers think and talk so beguilingly. This book is wonderfully funny. And intelligent. And moving" Independent on Sunday "Quicksilver clever and allusive" The Times "Scintillating... It's funny, quick on the draw, and knows when to soften the gaze. It reads so smoothly, the pages seem to flip themselves" Observer "A writer of rare intelligence. He catches the detail of contemporary life with an uncanny forensic skill... He is, as always, a superb ironist, a connoisseur of middling, muddling, modern England" London Review of Books "A wonderfully wistful and funny novel" Daily Telegraph