Short Stories/Novellas
No one has a better perspective to see things from both sides of the Channel than Julian Barnes. He is not only one of the premier writers in Britain but his prize-winning work has long been admired and recognized in France. In these exquisitely crafted and turned stories spanning several centuries, Julian Barnes takes as his universal theme the British in France, our fascination with the country, our various and mixed reasons for being there and our sometimes ambiguous reception.
EXPLAINING THE EXPLICIT edited by Jill Waters A series of thoughtful and challenging personal reflections from five very different writers on how best to write about sex (if at all). In little more than a generation, Western culture has arguably progressed from a largely repressed attitude to portraying the pleasures of the flesh to an altogether more permissive approach. How have writers - and readers - adjusted to these changes and what are authors trying to say when they write about sex ? These essays offer a chance to step back and reflect on some of the subtler aspects of writing about sexuality, arguments that can otherwise get lost in a sea of pneumatic imagery. Somewhere between the conventions of shock, titillation and comedy lies a range of other ideas waiting to be explored. Julian Barnes – is an internationally acclaimed novelist. He won the Man Booker prize in 2011 for his last novel The Sense of an Ending. David Bellos is a translator and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton. His book on translation and meaning Is That a Fish in Your Ear? was published in 2011. Sarah Churchwell is Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at University of East Anglia. Her book Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, is due out in April 2013. Vicki Feaver is an award-winning poet and lecturer. Her last collection The Book of Blood was shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 2006. Rachel Johnson is a journalist and novelist who won the Bad Sex Award in 2008, the year that the same judges awarded John Updike a ‘lifetime achievement’ award. Her latest novel Winter Games was published in 2012. Jill Waters – is an independent radio producer with a background in publishing. She commissioned these essays after a conversation with Julian Barnes. They were broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2013 and are published here in full for the first time.
A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending and one of Britain’s greatest writers, a twist on the workshop story and defense of Papa Hemingway, with art, love, ambition mixed in. “Homage to Hemingway” is modeled after the oft-overlooked Ernest Hemingway story “Homage to Switzerland,” a formally experimental work composed of three related vignettes. Here, Barnes composes three portraits of the modern writing life, a rhapsodic, witty and hopeful account of the writer’s search for what is good and what is true. From Barnes’s collection of miscellaneous prose, Through the Window. An eBook short.