Cross Channel (Vintage International) - Softcover

Barnes, Julian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067976755X ISBN 13: 9780679767558

Publisher: Vintage, 1997

Synopsis

In his first collection of short stories, Barnes explores the narrow body of water containing the vast sea of prejudice and misapprehension which lies between England and France with acuity humor, and compassion. For whether Barnes's English characters come to France as conquerors or hostages, laborers, athletes, or aesthetes, what they discover, alongside rich food and barbarous sexual and religious practices, is their own ineradicable Englishness. The ten stories that make up Cross Channel introduce us to a plethora of intriguing, original, and sometimes ill-fated characters. Elegantly conceived and seductively written, Cross Channel is further evidence of Barnes's wizardry.
"Barnes is a witty, playful and ironic writer at the top of his form...Cross Channel is in the best sense an artful book."--San Francisco Chronicle
"Fluently written, finely observed...delicately patterned."--New York Times

About this title

Review:

"Barnes is a witty, playful and ironic writer at the top of his form...Cross Channel is in the best sense an artful book."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"Fluently written, finely observed...delicately patterned."
--New York Times

From the Publisher:

Wise and witty collection of stories of British in France
In these exquisitely crafted and turned stories spanning several centuries, Julian Barnes takes as his universal theme the British in France, our fascination with that country, our various and mixed reasons for being there and our sometimes ambiguous reception. These clever, wise and imaginative stories are permeated with understanding of what it has meant for generations from these islands to cross the Channel. The No.1 bestseller from one of Britain's finest writers. "Love, sex, art, literature, wars, religion, wine, spirit, the steam engine and, yes, Eurostar: they are all there. All the emotions, attitudes, pursuits and endeavours that typically seem to link Britain to France feature in the first collection of short stories by Julian Barnes...A delightful book" Thierry Naudin, European; "The book is a delight...Undoubtedly Barnes's best book since Flaubert's Parrot" Allan Massie, Scotsman

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 067976755X
• ISBN 13: 9780679767558
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224