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The Porcupine
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  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409089018
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 144

The Porcupine

Formats & editions
Paperback
1 Oct 2010
EBook
1 July 2010
Audiobook
27 Aug 2020
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'Superbly humane in its moral concerns...an excellent novel' The Times

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011

Stoyo Petkanov, the deposed Party leader of a former Soviet satellite country, is on trial. His adversary, the prosecutor general, stands for the new government's ideals and liberal certainties, and is attempting to ensare Petkanov with the dictator's own totalitarian laws. But Petkanov is not beaten yet. He has been given his chance to fight back and he takes it with a vengeance, to the increasing discomfort and surprise of those around him.
  • Published: 1 July 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409089018
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 144
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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

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

Praise for The Porcupine

A minor masterpiece of political satire: compelling, funny and frightening

Robert Harris

The Porcupine is a new indisputable proof of Mr Barnes's creative power, yet what really astonished me, the Prosecutor, was the amazing precision of the intellectual's view of a socialist dictator, which so accorded with Zhivkov's true character

Prosecutor Zhekov, official prosecutor of the deposed Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov

Critics have overlooked his tenderness, underestimated his intelligence, and denied his wisdom... The Porcupine is a superbly accomplished novella

Nick Hornby

The neatness of the novel's structure is complemented by the rampageous energy of the characters for which it is the cage

Daily Telegraph