Exploring the archives of the Man Booker prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes – including notebooks, drafts, typescripts and publishing correspondence – this book is an extraordinary in-depth study of the creative practice of a major contemporary novelist. In Julian Barnes from the Margins, Vanessa Guignery charts the genesis and publication history of all of Barnes's major novels, from his debut with Metroland, through Flaubert's Parrot and A History of the World in 10 1⁄2 Chapters to The Sense of an Ending.
THE WILEY BLACKWELL COMPANION TO CONTEMPORARY BRITISH AND IRISH LITERATURE An insightful guide to the exploration of modern British and Irish literature The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature is a must-have guide for anyone hoping to navigate the world of new British and Irish writing. Including modern authors and poets from the 1960s through to the 21st century, the Companion provides a thorough overview of contemporary poetry, fiction, and drama by some of the most prominent and noteworthy writers. Seventy-three comprehensive chapters focus on individual authors as well as such topics as Englishness and identity, contemporary Science Fiction, Black writing in Britain, crime fiction, and the influence of globalization on British and Irish Literature. Written in four parts, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature includes comprehensive examinations of individual authors, as well as a variety of themes that have come to define the contemporary period: ethnicity, gender, nationality, and more. A thorough guide to the main figures and concepts in contemporary literature from Britain and Ireland, this two-volume set: Includes studies of notable figures such as Seamus Heaney and Angela Carter, as well as more recently influential writers such as Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. Covers topics such as LGBT fiction, androgyny in contemporary British Literature, and post-Troubles Northern Irish Fiction Features a broad range of writers and topics covered by distinguished academics Includes an analysis of the interplay between individual authors and the major themes of the day, and whether an examination of the latter enables us to appreciate the former. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature provides essential reading for students as well as academics seeking to learn more about the history and future direction of contemporary British and Irish Literature.
BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • From the internationally bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending comes a literary detective story of a retired doctor obsessed with the 19th century French author Flaubert—and with tracking down the stuffed parrot that once inspired him. • “A high literary entertainment carried off with great brio.” —The New York Times Book Review Julian Barnes playfully combines a detective story with a character study of its detective, embedded in a brilliant riff on literary genius. 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.
An extraordinary collection of essays on the great masters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art—from the Booker Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending. “An engaging and empathetic volume.” —The New York Times Book Review As Julian Barnes notes: “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 it is a rare picture that 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.” This is the exact dynamic that informs his new book. In his 1989 novel A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, Barnes had a chapter on Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, and since then he has written about many great masters of art, including Delacroix, Manet, Fantin-Latour, Cézanne, Degas, Redon, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton, Braque, Magritte, Oldenburg, Lucian Freud and Howard Hodgkin. The seventeen essays gathered here help trace the arc from Romanticism to Realism and into Modernism; they are adroit, insightful and, above all, a true pleasure to read.
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 errors, then slowly darkens and deepens, drawing us compellingly into the quagmires of the heart. “An interplay of serious thought and dazzling wit. . . . It's moving, it's funny, it's frightening . . . fiction at its best.” —New York Times Book Review
Investigations of what increasing digital connectivity and the digitalization of the economy mean for people and places at the world's economic margins. Within the last decade, more than one billion people became new Internet users. Once, digital connectivity was confined to economically prosperous parts of the world; now Internet users make up a majority of the world's population. In this book, contributors from a range of disciplines and locations investigate the impact of increased digital connectivity on people and places at the world's economic margins. Does the advent of a digitalized economy mean that those in economic peripheries can transcend spatial, organizational, social, and political constraints—or do digital tools and techniques tend to reinforce existing inequalities? The contributors present a diverse set of case studies, reporting on digitalization in countries ranging from Chile to Kenya to the Philippines, and develop a broad range of theoretical positions. They consider, among other things, data-driven disintermediation, women's economic empowerment and gendered power relations, digital humanitarianism and philanthropic capitalism, the spread of innovation hubs, and two cases of the reversal of core and periphery in digital innovation. Contributors Niels Beerepoot, Ryan Burns, Jenna Burrell, Julie Yujie Chen, Peter Dannenberg, Uwe Deichmann, Jonathan Donner, Christopher Foster, Mark Graham, Nicolas Friederici, Hernan Galperin, Catrihel Greppi, Anita Gurumurthy, Isis Hjorth, Lilly Irani, Molly Jackman, Calestous Juma, Dorothea Kleine, Madlen Krone, Vili Lehdonvirta, Chris Locke, Silvia Masiero, Hannah McCarrick,Deepak K. Mishra, Bitange Ndemo, Jorien Oprins, Elisa Oreglia, Stefan Ouma, Robert Pepper, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Julian Stenmanns, Tim Unwin, Julia Verne, Timothy Waema
Julian Barnes's work has been marked by great variety, ranging not only from conventional fiction to postmodernist experimentation in such well-known novels as Flaubert's Parrot (1984) and A History of the World in 10 1⁄2 Chapters (1989), but also from witty essays to deeply touching short stories. The responses of readers and critics have likewise varied, from enthusiasm to scepticism, as the substantial volume of critical analysis demonstrates. This Readers' Guide provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the essential criticism on Barnes's work, drawing from a selection of reviews, interviews, essays and books. Through the presentation and assessment of key critical interpretations, Vanessa Guignery provides the most wide-ranging examination of his fiction and non-fiction so far, considering key issues such as his use of language, his treatment of history, obsession, love, and the relationship between fact and fiction. Covering all of the novels to date, from Metroland (1981) to Arthur and George (2005), this is an invaluable introduction to the work of one of Britain's most exciting and popular contemporary writers.
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending and one of Britain’s greatest writers, a twist on the workshop story and defense of Papa Hemingway, with art, love, ambition mixed in. “Homage to Hemingway” is modeled after the oft-overlooked Ernest Hemingway story “Homage to Switzerland,” a formally experimental work composed of three related vignettes. Here, Barnes composes three portraits of the modern writing life, a rhapsodic, witty and hopeful account of the writer’s search for what is good and what is true. From Barnes’s collection of miscellaneous prose, Through the Window. An eBook short.
From the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of A Sense of an Ending comes a comedy of sexual awakening in the 1960s that is “wonderfully fresh, crackling with nostalgic irreverence” (Vogue). Only the author of Flaubert's Parrot could give us a novel that is at once a note-perfect rendition of the angsts and attitudes of English adolescence, a giddy comedy of sexual awakening, and a portrait of the accommodations that some of us call "growing up" and others "selling out.
From Black Sabbath to Big Black, a ride through the evolution, diversity, and influence of genre-defying heavy music. It began with the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.” It was distilled to its dark essence by Black Sabbath. And it has flourished into a vibrant modern underground, epitomized by Newcastle’s Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs. This is the evolution of heavy music. The voyage is as varied as it is illuminating: from the lysergic blunt trauma of Blue Cheer to the locked grooves of Funkadelic, the aural frightmares of Faust to the tectonic crush of Sleep, alighting on post-punk, industrial, grunge, stoner rock, and numerous other genres along the way. Ranging from household names to obscure cult heroes and heroines, Electric Wizards demonstrates how each successive phase of heavy music was forged by what came before, outlining a rich and eclectic lineage that extends far beyond the usual boundaries of heavy rock or heavy metal. It extols those who did things differently, who introduced something fresh and exciting into this elemental tradition, whether by design, accident, or sheer chance. In doing so, Electric Wizards weaves an entirely new tapestry of heavy music.
