Review
From the book jacket: In the vast expanse of late-Victorian Britain, two boys come to life: George,
the son of a Midlands vicar, and Arthur, in shabby genteel Edinburgh, both of
them feeling at once near to and impossibly distant from the beating heart of
Empire. One falls prey to a series of pranks en route to a legal vocation, while
the other studies medicine before discovering a different calling entirely, and
it is years before their destinies are entwined in a mesmerizing alliance. We
follow each through outrageous accusation and unrivaled success, through faith
and perseverance and dogged self-recrimination, whether in the dock awaiting
complete disgrace or at the height of fame while desperately in love with a
woman not his wife, and gradually realize that George is half-Indian and that
Arthur becomes the creator of the world's most famous detective....
Beyond the Book
About the author: Julian Barnes was born in Leicester,
England, in 1946, Over the past 30 years he has written novels,
non-fiction, short stories and two series (one in his own name and one as Dan
Kavanagh). He has won a number of literary prizes and has been nominated
for the Booker Prize three times. In France, he is the only writer to have won
both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and in 2004 he became a Commandeur
de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Partial bibliography (novels & collections)
Metroland (1980)
Before She Met Me (1982)
Flaubert's Parrot (1984)
Staring At the Sun (1986)
A History of the World In 10 1/2 Chapters (1989)
The...
