Britain's most passionate Francophile takes us on a wonderfully rich, witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi
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 The Man in the Red Coat, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. In 2017 he was awarded the Legion d'honneur.
What a deliciously intelligent entertainment this is, couched in
a prose of enviable suppleness... a master is at work
here. -- Rupert Christiansen * Daily Telegraph *
One of his best books, very handsomely published too...
[The Man in the Red Coat is] a bravura performance,
highly entertaining. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard, Book
of the Week *
Do not google Samuel Jean Pozzi. If you want to enjoy Julian
Barnes's The Man in the Red Coat - and believe me, it's
teeming with delights - stay away from search engines and
trust the author to tell the story in his own way... punctuated
by the sound of gunshot...[this is a] brilliant, defiantly
unconventional book. -- Adam Begley * Spectator *
The Belle Epoque is brought to life through three colourful
lives in this sparkling account stuffed with top fin-de-siecle
tittle-tattle. -- Robbie Millen and James Marriott * The Times
*The Best Books of 2019* *
Julian Barnes's wonderful The Man in the Red Coat surges
round Belle Epoque Paris... a story full of digressions, white
peacocks, missing limbs, amusing adverbs and fantastic clothes.
An absolute tonic for grey winter days. -- Claire Harman *
Evening Standard *Books of the Year* *
Fascinating history, biography and philosophy rolled into
one. In The Man in the Red Coat, Barnes is the ideal guide
to...a delightful amble through La Belle Epoque... a
riveting dissection of an era. -- Martin Chilton * Independent
*
This elegant, seductive history is a book best read in the
spirit of its times. The Man In The Red Coat is less a lesson than
a day-dream of France's golden heyday. Wrap yourself in a
Japanese tea gown, languish on a peacock-print sofa and abandon
yourself to fin-de-siecle Paris and the ministrations of Doctor
Love. -- Laura Freeman * Mail on Sunday *
As with his masterpiece, A History of the World in 101/2 Chapters
(1989), [Barnes'] new book [The Man in the Red Coat] seems
different from anything ever written before. -- John Carey *
Sunday Times *
This lavish study of society surgeon Samuel de Pozzi invites us
into a world of artists, libertines and medical innovation...
[it's] enjoyably obsessive...biographical detective
work. -- Tim Adams * Observer, Book of the Week *
Belle-Epoque Paris comes alive in this biography of a
pioneering French doctor, Samuel Jean Pozzi... Barnes, the author
of The Sense of an Ending, sketches his subject's life in
fascinating detail, including entanglements with Henry James,
Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt. -- Joumana Khatib * New York Times
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