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  • Published: 13 January 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529972320
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $24.99

A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters (Vintage Past)



A new, Vintage Classics red spine edition of A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, published to celebrate the enduring impact of writing a career that spans almost half a century

History isn't what happened. History is just what historians tell us.

From the Titanic to the Amazon, the raft of the Medusa to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters presents a surprising, subversive, fictional history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is no ordinary history, but something stranger: a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination.

'Funny, ironic, erudite, surprising, and not afraid to take a dive overboard into the depths of sorrow and loss’ Nadime Gordimer

  • Published: 13 January 2026
  • ISBN: 9781529972320
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and The Man in the Red Coat, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

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