The parrot Tico Tango had a round, yellow mango, when he saw Marina munch on a green grape bunch. And Tico Tango knew that he had to have it too, so he snatched it!

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.

It's been six months since their last adventure aboard the S.S. Excalibur and Philipa and her friend Philip (who happens to be the son of the ship's captain) are both excited to meet the ship's new assistant cruise director, Herby Twining. Herby is a real jokester, the kind of guy who gets a kick out of shaking your hand with a buzzer hidden in his palm. Philip is quite entertained by Herby and appreciates his skills as an amateur magician, but when Philip's expensive and rare parrot, Don Quixote, goes missing and Herby seems like he might be a prime suspect, suddenly Phillip isn't laughing anymore.

"The first book to look at naturalized parrots with a global perspective, with a wide range of chapters by 36 leading researchers"--

The Parrot’s Perch opens in 2013, when Karen Keilt, age sixty, receives an invitation to testify at the Brazilian National Truth Commission at the UN in New York. The email sparks memories of her “previous life”—the one she has kept safely bottled up for more than thirty-seven years. Hopeful of helping to raise awareness about ongoing human rights violations in Brazil, she wants to testify, but she anguishes over reliving the horrific events of her youth. In the pages that follow, Keilt tells the story of her life in Brazil—from her exclusive, upper-class lifestyle and dreams of Olympic medals to her turmoil-filled youth. Full of hints of a dark oligarchy in Brazil, corruption, crime, and military interference, The Parrot’s Perch is a searing, sometimes shocking true tale of suffering, struggle—and survival. Karen Keilt lived through the darkest days of Brazil’s military dictatorship. In her courageous and compelling memoir, Keilt narrates an emotionally honest reckoning of her desire to find true happiness. Forbidden by her wealthy family to even mention her imprisonment, torture, and rape, Keilt is forced to make a change that will affect the rest of her life. Seen through her testimony to the Brazilian National Truth Commission at the UN, readers become witnesses to both her vulnerability and her quiet strength.