A History of the World in 10÷ Chapters - Tapa blanda

A stowaway aboard Noah's Ark gives us his account of the Voyage - a surprising, subversive one, quite unlike the official version - which explains a lot about how the human race has subsequently developed. A guest lecturer on a cruise ship in the Aegean has his work interrupted by a group of mysterious visitors who place him in a cruel dilemma. An ecclesiastical court in medieval France hears a bizarre case . . . Barnes creates a kaleidoscope of narrative voices - from fiction and fact, painting and snatches of autobiography - that comes slowly and compellingly into focus. `You will want to read it again and again, and why not? There's nothing around to touch it.' Anne Smith, Literary Review `There is more moral and intellectual fodder, and more jokes, here than you will read in a month of Sundays . . . storytelling and teaching which captivate, liberate, and above all, enchant' Financial Times `Funny, ironic, erudite, surprising, and not afraid to take a dive overboard into the depths of sorrow and loss. My novel of the year' Nadine Gordimer

Julian Barnes has published over a dozen books, amongst them the novels Metroland, Before She Met Me, Flaubert's Parrot, Staring at the Sun, A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters, Talking It Over, The Porcupine, England, England and Love, etc; short stories, including Cross Channel and The Lemon Table; and the collections of essays, Letters from London and Something to Declare. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. In France he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Medicis (for Flaubert's Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking It Over ). In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg. He lives in London.