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  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409088837
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

Cross Channel




Clever, wise, reflective and imaginative, these stories are permeated with understanding of what it has meant for generations of British people to cross the Channel and make a life in France.

From the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction comes an enthralling set of short stories.

No one has a better perspective on life on both sides of the channel than Julian Barnes. In these exquisitely crafted stories spanning several centuries, he takes as his universal theme the British in France; from the last days of a reclusive English composer, the beef consuming 'navvies' labouring on the Paris-Rouen railway to a lonely woman mourning the death of her brother on the battlefields of the Somme.

  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409088837
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 224

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.

Also by Julian Barnes

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Praise for Cross Channel

Always intelligent and perceptive, but so beautifully written that it's easy to understand.

Jancis Robinson, Week

Crisp with witty, urbane intelligence.

Sunday Times

A glittering collection of stories... His marvellously supple and exact prose is matched with subjects that powerfully stir his creativity... It's impossible to imagine a fictional panorama of Britain's long relationship with France realized with more cordial understanding

Sunday Times

His writing demonstrates the billowing lightness of imagination... reading these stories, you perceive and love France afresh... Cross Channel is characterised by the intelligence, irony and wit you associate with his writing, but it is also suffused with feeling, deeply seasoned with affection

Independent

Love, sex, art, literature, wars, religion, wine, spirit, the steam engine and, yes, Eurostar: they are all there. All the emotions, attitudes, pursuits and endeavours that typically seem to link Britain to France feature in the first collection of short stories by Julian Barnes...A delightful book

European

Wonderfully ironic, perceptive and at times tender... Barnes has created something unique in his work, a particular way of looking at life, at words, at relationships, which is the mark of every true stylist

Financial Times