Julian P. Barnes

Writer. Author of novels, short stories, and essays, he also translated a book by French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection of German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. His writing has earned him considerable respect as an author who treats themes of history, reality, truth and love in innovative ways. His novel Flaubert's Parrot (1984) broke with the traditional linear structure of his previous novels, featuring the fragmentary biography of an elderly doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who focuses obsessively on the life of Gustave Flaubert. Published to great acclaim, especially in France, Flaubert's Parrot helped establish Barnes as one of the pre-eminent writers of his generation. He has also worked as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesman and The New Review, and as a television critic for The Observer. He has published crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh though not for more than twenty-five years. Honors include the 2011 Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending and the 2011 David Cohen Prize for Literature.