Levels of Life

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.

"It is extraordinary... [It] would seem to pull off the impossible: to recreate, on the page, what it is like to be alive in the world." -- Emma Brockes Guardian "This is a book of rare intimacy and honesty about love and grief. To read it is a privilege. To have written it is astonishing." -- Ruth Scurr The Times "It's an unrestrained, affecting piece of writing, raw and honest and more truthful for its dignity and artistry... Anyone who has loved and suffered loss, or just suffered, should read this book, and re-read it, and re-read it." -- Martin Fletcher Independent "Levels of Life is both a supremely crafted artefact and a desolating guidebook to the land of loss." -- John Carey Sunday Times "While one might expect a Barnes book to impress, delight, move, disconcert or amuse, the last thing for which his work prepares us is the blast of paralysingly direct emotion that concludes Levels of Life." -- Tim Martin Daily Telegraph