Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction
As every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of Wight. Grotesque, visionary tycoon Sir Jack Pitman takes the saying literally and does exactly that. He constructs on the island 'The Project', a vast heritage centre containing everything 'English', from Big Ben to Stonehenge, from Manchester United to the white cliffs of Dover. The project is monstrous, risky, and vastly successful. In fact, it gradually begins to rival 'Old' England and even threatens to supersede it...
One of Barnes's finest and funniest novels, England, England calls into question the idea of replicas, truth vs fiction, reality vs art, nationhood, myth-making, and self-exploration.
'A brilliant, Swiftian fantasy' The Economist
Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 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 three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Legion d'honneur.
Title: England, England
Author: Julian Barnes
ISBN: 9780099526544
Binding:
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
Publication Date: 2008-04-24
Number of Pages: 272
Weight: 0.2586 kg
The sharpest-tasting novel about the modern littleness of England. -- John Sutherland * The Times *
Runs at glorious full tilt...delightful stuff * Independent *
A brilliant, Swiftian fantasy * The Economist *
There is no more intelligent writer on the literary scene. In this novel, he is also moving. He has written nothing more poignant and enticing -- John Carey * Sunday Times *
Not only a very funny satire about England and the world... He has also skilfully dissected the discomforting ways in which we have all grown to accept, and even depend on, illusion * Wall Street Journal *