Porcupine

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.

"Critics have overlooked his tenderness, underestimated his intelligence, and denied his wisdom... The Porcupine is a superbly accomplished novella" Nick Hornby "A minor masterpiece of political satire: compelling, funny and frightening" Robert Harris "The neatness of the novel's structure is complemented by the rampageous energy of the characters for which it is the cage" Daily Telegraph "The Porcupine is a new indisputable proof of Mr Barnes's creative power, yet what really astonished me, the Prosecutor, was the amazing precision of the intellectual's view of a socialist dictator, which so accorded with Zhivkov's true character" Prosecutor Zhekov, official prosecutor of the deposed Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov