Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.

Forster Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters
1981 Somerset Maugham Award


List of works
Novels
Metroland (1980)
Before She Met Me (1982)
Flaubert's Parrot (1984) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Staring at the Sun (1986)
A History of the World in 10½ Chapters (1989)
Talking It Over (1991)
The Porcupine (1992)
England England (1998) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Love etc (2000) – sequel to Talking it Over
Arthur & George (2005) – shortlisted for the Booker Prize
The Sense of an Ending (2011) – winner of the Booker Prize
Collections and non-fiction
Letters from London (Picador London 1995) – journalism from The New Yorker ISBN 0-330-34116-2
Cross Channel (1996) – stories
Something to Declare (2002) – essays
The Pedant in the Kitchen (2003) – journalism on cooking
The Lemon Table (2004) – stories
Nothing to Be Frightened Of (2008) – memoir
Pulse (2011) – stories
Through the Window (2012) – essays
Works as Dan Kavanagh
Duffy (1980)
Fiddle City (1981)
Putting the Boot In (1985)
Going to the Dogs (1987)


Further reading
Peter Childs Julian Barnes (Contemporary British Novelists) Manchester University Press (2011)
Sebastian Groes & Peter Childs eds. At the age of 10 Barnes was told by his mother that he had "too much imagination". England England is a humorous novel that explores the idea of national identity as the entrepreneur Sir Jack Pitman creates a theme park on the Isle of Wight that duplicates the tourist spots of England.

Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is a contemporary English writer. Barnes has also won several literary prizes in France including the Prix Médicis for Flaubert's Parrot and the Prix Femina for Talking It Over.