Julian Barnes Biography
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England on January 19,
1946. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964 and at
Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he graduated in modern languages (with
honors) in 1968. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the
Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. In 1977, Barnes began
working as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesmen and the
New Review. From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first
for the New Statesmen and then for the Observer (London).
Barnes has received several awards and honors for his writing
including the Somerset Maugham Award (Metroland 1981), three Booker Prize
nominations (Flaubert's Parrot 1984, England, England 1998, Arthur & George 2005); the
Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (FP 1985); a Prix Médicis (FP
1986); the E. M. Forster Award (American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters,
1986); the Gutenberg Prize (1987); a Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy, 1988); and the Prix
Femina (Talking It Over 1992). Barnes was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre
des Arts et des Lettres in 1988, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in
1995 and Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004. In 1993 he was
awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation and in 2004 won the Austrian
State Prize for European Literature.
Among other works, Julian Barnes has written eleven novels, three books of short
stories, and four non fiction works. He has also translated a book by French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection
of German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. His writing has earned him considerable
respect as an author who deals with the themes of history, reality, truth and
love.
In 2011, his highly acclaimed novel The Sense of an Ending earned him his first Man Booker Prize and was nominated for a Costa Book Award.
He has also written four novels under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh, a mysterious, steer-wrestling, gay-bar-bouncing personality.
His wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, died in October 2008.
This biography was last updated on 03/01/2012.
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