The stories in Julian Barnes' long-awaited third collection are attuned to rhythms and currents: of the body, of love and sex, illness and death, connections and conversations. Each character is bent to a pulse, propelled on by success and loss, by new beginnings and endings.

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they would navigate the girl-less sixth form together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. May be Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they all swore to stay friends for life.

Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. As the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages.

As every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of White. Grotesque, visionary tycoon Sir Jack Pitman takes the saying literally and does exactly that. He constructs on the island The Project that is monstrous, risky, and vastly successful. In fact, it gradually begins to rival Old England and even threatens to supersede it.

"I cannot remember when I enjoyed a first novel more." --Daily Telegraph

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011.

Christopher and Toni found in each other the perfect companion for that universal adolescent pastime: smirking at the world as you find it. In between training as flaneurs and the grind of school they cast a cynical eye over their various dislikes: parents with their lives of spotless emptiness, Third Division (North) football teams, God, commuters and girls, and the inhabitants of Metroland, the strip of suburban dormitory Christopher...

"A remarkably original and subtle novel." --Frank Kermode, "New York Review of Books"
Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011
Graham Hendrick, an historian, has left his wife Barbara for the vivacious Ann, and is more than pleased with his new life. Until, that is, the day he discovers Ann's celluloid past as a mediocre film actress. Soon Graham is pouncing on old clues, examining her books for inscriptions from past lovers, frequenting cinemas and poring over the bad movies she appeared in. It's not that he blames Anne for having a past before they met, but history has always...

Jean Serjeant was a carefree country girl before the war, becoming a wise and trenchant old lady in the year 2020. Through this period, we follow her bruising experiences in marriage, her questioning of male truths and her adventures in motherhood, whilst finding the often unsatisfactory answers to life's questions.

Introducing Stuart, Gillian, & Oliver. In turn, they speak straight out to camera - & give their side of a love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding darkens & deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart.

Stoyo Petkanov, the deposed leader of a former Soviet allie, is on trial. His adversary stands for the new ideals, the leader for the old - or so one would think. But Petkanov is different and, when given his day in court, he only increases the discomfort and suprise of those around him.

This is a collection of 10 short stories about the British in France through the centuries. The stories are designed to play off each other and work as a whole, exploring the British fascination with France.