The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide‟s reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the Page | 49 . state which paid the coroner? And then, since you had been declared temporarily mad, your reasons for killing yourself were also assumed to be mad. So I doubt anyone paid much attention to Adrian‟s argument, with its references to philosophers ancient and modern, about the superiority of the intervening act over the unworthy passivity of merely letting life happen to you.

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.