Flaubert's Parrot

by Julian Barnes

Overview

BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • From the internationally bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending comes a literary detective story of a retired doctor obsessed with the 19th century French author Flaubert—and with tracking down the stuffed parrot that once inspired him. • “A high literary entertainment carried off with great brio.” —The New York Times Book Review

Julian Barnes playfully combines a detective story with a character study of its detective, embedded in a brilliant riff on literary genius.

A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour de force of seductive originality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679731368
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/27/1990
Series:	Vintage International
Edition description:	1st Vintage international ed
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Born in Leicester in 1946, Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, a book of stories, and a collection of essays. He has won both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and in 1988 was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London.

Hometown:

London, England

Date of Birth:

January 19, 1946

Place of Birth:

Leicester, England

Education:

Degree in modern languages from Magdalen College, Oxford, 1968

What People are Saying About This

Joseph Heller

"Delightful and enriching...a book to revel in!"

John Irving

"A gem! An unashamed literary novel that is also unashamed to be readable and broadly entertaining. Bravo!"

Editorial Reviews

A high literary entertainment carried off with great brio.... rich in parody and parrotry, full of insight and wit ... a great success.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

Mr. Barnes hasn't written this novel directly or simply. Rather, he has appropriately given us the story of an obsession with Flaubert. The result is a splendid hybrid of a novel, part biography, part fiction, part literary criticism, the whole carried off with great bio. Flaubert's Parrot' is high literary entertainment. -- New York Times

Peter Brooks

"Witty and dazzeling!" -- The New York Times

Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

With his customary grace and dry British wit, Simon Vance matches the tone and tenor of this decidedly erudite and playfully imaginative literary biography…Sounding like a gentleman holding court in his drawing room, Vance introduces listeners to Flaubert’s life…the way a good biography should sound. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”

AudioFile

Richard Morant is the perfect narrator for this unusual and much loved early work by Julian Barnes. The novel, if novel it is, is told in the voice of a rather crabby English widower, a doctor named Geoffrey Braithwaite, who has become obsessed with Flaubert, his memory and his legacy, and especially with which of two possible stuffed parrots is the one Flaubert kept on his desk as he wrote a story featuring a parrot. The accent of an educated Englishman is essential for Braithwaite, as is a well-polished French accent, and Morant has both. But most important is his skill in making the text lively, in inhabiting Braithwaite’s obsessive inner world with interest and attention. A most welcome addition to Barnes’s audio oeuvre. B.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

AUGUST 2014 - AudioFile