JULIAN BARNES’SA HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10½ CHAPTERS

“Inspired … Barnes is a dazzler.”

—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“This is a playful, witty and entertaining gathering of conjectures by a man to whom ideas are quite clearly crucial: a quintessential humanist, it would seem, of the pre-post-modernist species.”

—The New York Times Book Review

“Barnes is an important writer who continues to grow, blessed … as he is with both ambition and self-irony. ”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“Sensational … the book is utterly novel.… A History of the World in 10½ Chapters really strings together fictional conceits that dance and prance and mug … the kind of crowd pleasers that Twain or Wilde might have read on tour … a fabulous independent voice.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“Barnes’s literary energy and daring are nearly unparalleled among contemporary English novelists.”

—New Republic

“A challenging, readable and entertaining collection … Julian Barnes takes us on a marvelous trip.”

—Dallas Morning News

“Barnes leapfrogs easily from fabulism to reportage to criticism to the personal essay.… There are shafts of brilliance … and a saving taste of the bitterness that breeds effective satire.”

—Christian Science Monitor