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Flaubert's Parrot
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  • Published: 2 July 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099540588
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $28.00

Flaubert's Parrot

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 July 2009
EBook
1 July 2010
Audiobook
18 Nov 2010
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'An intricate and delightful novel' (Graham Greene) from Booker prize-winning author Julian Barnes.

Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert.

As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels, we learn an enormous amount about the writer’s work, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But we also gradually come to learn some important and shocking details about Geoffrey himself.

A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour-de-force of seductive originality.

‘Unputdownable... A mesmeric original’ Philip Larkin

‘Delightful and enriching...a book to revel in!’ Joseph Heller

‘A wry and graceful book... Unfailingly sharp and often very funny’ Sunday Times

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR TO MARK THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST PUBLICATION
  • Published: 2 July 2009
  • ISBN: 9780099540588
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $28.00
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About the author

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is the author of fourteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Booker Prize, 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 five works of non-fiction, including Nothing to Be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life. He was awarded the David Cohen Prize for lifetime contribution to literature in 2011, and the Légion d'honneur in 2017.
portrait photo of Julian Barnes

Also by Julian Barnes

The Only Story
The Man in the Red Coat
Death
Departure(s)
Keeping an Eye Open
The Sense of an Ending
The Noise of Time
See all

Praise for Flaubert's Parrot

Delightful and enriching... A book to revel in!

Joseph Heller

Endless food for thought, beautifully written... A tour de force

Germaine Greer

A gem: an unashamed literary novel that is also unashamed to be readable, and broadly entertaining. Bravo!

John Irving

Julian Barnes' wry and graceful book, part novel, part stealthy literary criticism, traces the marks Flaubert made on a forgetting world. The writing is unfailingly sharp and often very funny, and among the best prose I have read in years

Sunday Times

A delight... Handsomely the best novel published in England in 1984

John Fowles

A dazzling achievement...remarkably inventive as well as audacious

Walter Abish

Barnes manages to be erudite but extremely funny too… You never know what Barnes is going to do next and I admire that.’

Caroline Rees, Daily Express