Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters: Introduction by Sarah Churchwell (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters: Introduction by Sarah Churchwell (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series) by Barnes, Julian. hardcover edition. ISBN: 8601422518733.

An Everymans Library hardcover omnibus edition of two of the Booker Prize-winning authors earliest and most admired novels, neither of which has been available in hardcover for more than two decades. With full-cloth binding, a silk ribbon marker, a chronology, and a new introduction. Flauberts Parrot, Julian Barness breakthrough book—shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984—is the story of Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired doctor who is obsessed with the French author and with tracking down a stuffed parrot that once inspired him. Barnes playfully combines a literary detective story with a character study of its detective, embedded in a brilliant riff on literary genius. A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters is a mix of fictional and historical narratives of voyage and discovery—ranging from a woodworms perspective on Noahs ark to a survivor from the sinking of the Titanic—that question our ideas of history. One of his most inventive works, it was praised by Salman Rushdie as "frequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, iconoclastic, and a delight to read."