Bøker av Julian Barnes

I would urge you to read - and re-read ' Daily Telegraph**Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011**Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school.

'I don't believe in God, but I miss Him.' Julian Barnes' new book is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his philosopher brother, a meditation on mortality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and a homage to the French writer Jules Renard.

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed... In Levels of Life Julian Barnes gives us Nadar, the pioneer balloonist and aerial photographer; then, finally, he gives us the story of his own grief, unflinchingly observed. This is a book of intense honesty and insight;

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011Beginning with an unlikely stowaway's account of life on board Noah's Ark, A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters presents a surprising and subversive fictional-history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives.

Julian Barnes mistet konen sin, den litterære agenten Pat Kavanagh i 2008. Denne lille boka, Livets nivåer, består av tre fortellinger som alle på ulike sett handler om kjærlighet og sorg. I tillegg er det en bok om ballongferder og fotografi. Og ikke minst om hva som skjer når to mennesker møtes og om den smertefulle adskillelsen døden er. Kjærligheten til og smerten over tapet av livsledsagersken Pat går som en sterk understrøm gjennom hele teksten. Du setter sammen to ting som ikke har vært satt sammen før. Og verden er forandret. Folk legger kanskje ikke merke til det der og da, men det spiller ingen rolle. Verden er likevel forandret.

I januar 1936 stod en anmeldelse på trykk i Pravda om hvilket ble det sagt at den var så full av grammatiske feil at den måtte komme fra en hvis penn ingen torde rette. Den var forfattet av Stalin, og den skjelte ut Sjostakovitsj' opera Lady Macbeth fra Mtsensk. Det var en ikke musikk, men møl i følge Stalin. Laget av en fiende av folket. Denne anmeldelsen definerte Sjostakovitsj liv, og selv om han ble rehabilitert, og av utenverdenen sett som både medløper og informant, har Julian Barnes valgt å skrive om komponistens liv med medfølelse og forståelse. Julian Barnes skriver i sitt karakteristiske, vakre og presise språk, med en musikalitet som yter Sjostakovitsj rettferdighet og forsøker å si noe om kunstens kår under et totalitært regime.

Tony Webster har gjort karriere, giftet seg og skilt seg, og nå er han pensjonist. Han tenker tilbake på ungdomstiden da han gikk på kostskole og ble kjent med Adrian Finn. Adrian var mer alvorlig enn de andre, og helt klart den smarteste. Vennskapet tok slutt da Adrian endte opp med den jenta som Tony var forelsket i, selv om de hadde sverget at de skulle være venner hele livet. Men minner kan være upresise og ha en overraskende virkning, det beviser et brev Tony mottar fra en advokat.

The updated edition of Julian Barnes' best-loved writing on art, with seven new exquisite illustrated essays'Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation.

From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes a magnificent portrait of youth and growing up. Christopher and Toni found in each other the perfect companion for that universal adolescent pastime: smirking at the world as you find it.

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply moving novel by one of Britain's greatest mappers of the human heart.

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less?First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn't know anything about that at nineteen.As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.

In May 1937, a man in his early thirties waits by the lift of a Leningrad apartment block. He waits all through the night, expecting to be taken away to the Big House. Any celebrity he has known in the previous decade is no use to him now. And few who are taken to the Big House ever return.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for FictionFlaubert's Parrot deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; 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.

From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes an enthralling set of short stories. No one has a better perspective on life on both sides of the channel than Julian Barnes.

From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes the highly entertaining sequel to Talking it Over. In Talking it Over Gillian and Stuart were married until Oliver - witty, feckless Oliver - stole Gillian away.

A novel about the most dramatic political downfall of our time - that of Eastern Europe. The author won the Prix Medicis with "Flaubert's Parrot". He also wrote "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" and "Metroland".

Among the Chinese, the lemon is the symbol of death. At the 'lemon table', it is permissible - indeed obligatory - to talk about death, and each of the characters is facing death, but each in a very different way.

When it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this book, the author confronts our unending obsession with the end. It reflects on what it means to miss God, whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually turn into our parents.

From the deceptiveness of Penelope Fitzgerald to the directness of Hemingway, from Kipling's view of France to the French view of Kipling, from the National Treasure Status of George Orwell to the despair of Michel Houellebecq, the author considers what fiction is, and what it can do.

'The funniest piece of food writing - my own theoretical metier - that you will ever read'. Giles Coren, The Times

The stories in Julian Barnes' long-awaited third collection are attuned to rhythms and currents: of the body, of love and sex, illness and death, connections and conversations.

Examines the attempts of an increasingly bemused researcher to establish certain facts about a famous French novelist and the stuffed bird which used to sit on his desk. This book blends fact and fiction in a virtuoso kaleidoscope of vignettes from Noah's time to the present.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011Staring at the Sun charts the life of Jean Serjeant, from her beginning as a naive, carefree country girl before the war through to her wry and trenchant old age in the year 2020.

From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes a novel of profound insight and comic flare. Shy, sensible banker Stuart has trouble with women;