Julian Barnes's Blog, page 3

Try your hand at a Julian Barnes themed crossword at the Guardian.

Click the image to the right to visit the Guardian website. You can try the crossword online or print it out in PDF format to take with you.

Good luck!

The Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company and Nottingham Playhouse present
Arthur & George
Adapted for the stage by David Edgar
Based on the novel by Julian Barnes
Fri., 19 Mar 2010 – Sat., 10 Apr 2010.

Birmingham solicitor George Edalji has been convicted of a terrible crime and is desperate to prove his innocence. After his release from prison he recruits the help of none other than expert

Julian Barnes contributes his books of the year for The Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.

His selections include Laura Cumming's A Face to the World (HarperPress), Adam Foulds's The Quickening Maze (Cape), and several titles by John Updike.

Julian Barnes reviews Guy de Maupassant's Afloat (ranslated by Douglas Parméen) and Alien Hearts (translated by Richard Howard), both published by NYRB. "On We Sail" London Review of Books, 31.21, 5 November 2009: 25-28.

Excerpt:
One of the great examples of literary advice-giving took place in the summer of 1878. Guy de Maupassant was on the verge of becoming famous. As Flaubert's literary

Julian Barnes's new short story "Complicity" was published in the 19 October 2009 issue of The New Yorker.
Excerpt:

The first time I met her was at a party of Ben's; she had brought her mother. Have you watched mothers and daughters at parties together, and tried to work out who is taking care of whom? The daughter giving Mum a bit of an outing, Mum watching for the sort of men her daughter

Julian Barnes takes a fresh look at John Updike's Rabbit Quartet and finds he still thinks it is the greatest postwar American fiction. "Running Away" The Guardian, 17 October 2009.

Excerpt:

"When a writer you admire dies, rereading seems a normal courtesy and tribute. Occasionally, it may be prudent to resist going back: when Lawrence Durrell died, I preferred to remain with 40-year-old

Julian Barnes's Nothing to be Frightened of is, among many things, a family memoir, an exchange with his brother (a philosopher), a meditation on morality and the fear of death, a celebration of art, an argument with and about God, and homage to the French writer Jules Renard.

Though he warns us that 'this is not my autobiography', the result is a tour of the mind of one of our most brilliant