Yannis Loukas is editing his father's autobiography. Going through the family archives, he discovers the manuscript of an aspiring novelist named Loukas Matthaiou. While reading it, Yannis feels as if someone has put to paper his innermost thoughts. But who was the writer of this amazing story and what happened to him? Following in the tracks of this elusive stranger, Yannis' life takes an unforseen turn. He finds that everyone who met Matthaiou was profoundly affected by his charismatic personality. Driven by his quest to find Matthaiou, Yannis must first unravel the codes in his writing.

Yannis Loukas is editing his father's autobiography. Going through the family archives, he discovers the manuscript of an aspiring novelist named Loukas Matthaiou. While reading it, Yannis feels as if someone has put to paper his innermost thoughts. But who was the writer of this amazing story and what happened to him? Following in the tracks of this elusive stranger, Yannis' life takes an unforseen turn. He finds that everyone who met Matthaiou was profoundly affected by his charismatic personality. Driven by his quest to find Matthaiou, Yannis must first unravel the codes in his writing.

BOOKER PRIZE NOMINEE • From the internationally bestselling author of The Sense of an Ending comes a literary detective story of a retired doctor obsessed with the 19th century French author Flaubert—and with tracking down the stuffed parrot that once inspired him. • “A high literary entertainment carried off with great brio.” —The New York Times Book Review Julian Barnes playfully combines a detective story with a character study of its detective, embedded in a brilliant riff on literary genius. 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.

This exquisite novel tells the story of one of the most compelling heroines in modern literature--Emma Bovary. "Madame Bovary has a perfection that not only stamps it, but that makes it stand almost alone; it holds itself with such a supreme unapproachable assurance as both excites and defies judgement." - Henry James Unhappily married to a devoted, clumsy provincial doctor, Emma revolts against the ordinariness of her life by pursuing voluptuous dreams of ecstasy and love. But her sensuous and sentimental desires lead her only to suffering corruption and downfall. A brilliant psychological portrait, Madame Bovary searingly depicts the human mind in search of transcendence. Who is Madame Bovary? Flaubert's answer to this question was superb: "Madame Bovary, c'est moi." Acclaimed as a masterpiece upon its publication in 1857, the work catapulted Flaubert to the ranks of the world's greatest novelists. This volume, with its fine translation by Lowell Bair, a perceptive introduction by Leo Bersani, and a complete supplement of essays and critical comments, is the indispensable Madame Bovary.

A “well-researched, elegantly written” study of the life and work of 19th-century French author Gustave Flaubert (Roger Pearson, University of Oxford). Michel Winock’s biography situates Gustave Flaubert’s life and work in France’s century of great democratic transition. Flaubert did not welcome the egalitarian society predicted by Tocqueville. Wary of the masses, he rejected the universal male suffrage hard won by the Revolution of 1848, and he was exasperated by the nascent socialism that promoted the collective to the detriment of the individual. But above all, he hated the bourgeoisie. Vulgar, ignorant, obsessed with material comforts, impervious to beauty, the French middle class embodied for Flaubert every vice of the democratic age. His loathing became a fixation—and a source of literary inspiration. Flaubert depicts a man whose personality, habits, and thought are a stew of paradoxes. The author of Madame Bovary and Sentimental Education spent his life inseparably bound to solitude and melancholy, yet he enjoyed periodic escapes from his “hole” in Croisset to pursue a variety of pleasures: fervent friendships, society soirées, and a whirlwind of literary and romantic encounters. He prided himself on the impersonality of his writing, but he did not hesitate to use material from his own life in his fiction. Nowhere are Flaubert’s contradictions more evident than in his politics. An enemy of power who held no nostalgia for the monarchy or the church, he was nonetheless hostile to collectivist utopias. Despite declarations of the timelessness and sacredness of Art, Flaubert could not transcend the era he abominated. Rejecting the modern world, he paradoxically became its celebrated chronicler and the most modern writer of his time. Praise for Flaubert “This generous study ingeniously builds a narrative around Flaubert’s own words—from not only the novels but also voluminous correspondence and unpublished work. Adding light background and analysis, Winock allows the mind of the Master to shine.” —The New Yorker “It is precisely the historical background of Flaubert’s times, both its conscious and its invisible impingements on the writer’s sensibility, on which Winock is especially revelatory . . . Michel Winock has written a compelling and stylish biography, and Nicholas Elliott has brought it into English with flair and skill.” —Bruce Whiteman, Hudson Review “Noted French historian Winock’s biography succeeds in presenting a fresh portrait of a man plagued by paradoxes . . . Winock provides absorbing background related to the country’s social and political scenes that occurred during his subject’s lifetime.” —Erica Swenson Danowitz, Library Journal

This book approaches parody as a literary form that has assumed diverse forms and functions throughout history. The author handles this diversity by classifying parody according to its objects of imitation and specifying three major parodic kinds: parody directed at texts and personal styles, parody directed at genre, and parody directed at discourse. The book argues that different literary-historical periods in Britain have witnessed the prevalence of different kinds of parody and investigates the reasons underlying this phenomenon. All periods from the Middle Ages to the present are considered in this regard, but a special significance is given to the postmodern age, where parody has become a widely produced literary form. The book contends further that postmodern parody is primarily discourse parody - a phenomenon which can be explained through the major concerns of postmodernism as a movement. In addition to situating parody and its kinds in a historical context, this book engages in a detailed analysis of parody in the postmodern age, preparing the ground for making an informed assessment of the direction parody and its kinds may take in the near future.

A collection of interviews with leading writers such as Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Arundhati Roy and Will Self. Through these interviews the book explores and introduces a range of key themes in contemporary literature, raising questions about genre, history, postmodernism, celebrity culture and form.

This masterly volume comprises the best of the shorter fiction written by Just over the past 25 years--"masterpieces of balance, focus, and hidden order" ("Chicago Tribune").

Fans of Flaubert's Madame Bovary will want to read this reimagination of one of literature's most famous failures, Charles Bovary. Part fiction, part philosophy, Charles Bovary, Country Doctor is also a book about love. Charles Bovary, Country Doctor is one of the most unusual projects in twentieth-century literature: a novel-essay devoted to salvaging poor bungler Charles Bovary, the pathetic, laughable, cuckolded husband of Madame Bovary and the heartless creation of Gustave Flaubert. As a once-promising novelist who was tortured by the Nazis and survived a year in Auschwitz, author Jean Améry had a particular sympathy for the lived experience of vulnerability, affliction, and suffering, and in this book—available in English for the first time—he asserts the moral claims of Dr. Bovary. What results is a moving paean to the humanity of Charles Bovary and to the supreme value of love.