Staring at the Sun

Description

'Teasing fullness, wit, incisiveness, gentleness and generosity' Times Literary Supplement Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 Staring at the Sun charts the life of Jean Serjeant, from her beginning as a naive, carefree country girl before the war through to her wry and trenchant old age in the year 2020. We follow her bruising experience in marriage, her probing of male truths, her adventures in motherhood and in China and we cannot fail to be moved by the questions she asks of life and the often unsatisfactory answers it provides.

Julian Barnes is the author of twelve novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. He has also written three books of short stories, Cross Channel, The Lemon Table and Pulse; four collections of essays; and two books of non-fiction, Nothing to be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times Number One bestseller Levels of Life. He lives in London.

None of Mr Barnes's previous work... has quite prepared us for the bewildering maturity of Staring at the Sun...it dazzles in depth * Harpers & Queen * Brilliant... Mr Barnes's work is at the forefront of a new internationalization of British fiction * New York Times * A remarkable and risk-taking book, breezily philosophical and light-fingered, funny and also genuinely affecting in that it touches both the heart and the head * Glasgow Herald *