Flaubert's Parrot » (1st Vintage international ed)

In smart, rhythmic prose, Julian Barnes can deconstruct English-French relations, marriage, or simply the history of the world -- he can, and has, in a diverse and inventive body of work that includes Flaubert's Parrot, Metroland, and Letters from London.

A classic work by a great British author, published for the first time by Vintage.


Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the great French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert. As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels, we learn an enormous amount about the writer's work, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But we also gradually come to learn some important and shocking details about Geoffrey and his own life.

Peter Brooks

Mr. Barnes hasn't written this novel directly or simply. Rather, he has appropriately given us the story of an obsession with Flaubert. The result is a splendid hybrid of a novel, part biography, part fiction, part literary criticism, the whole carried off with great bio. Flaubert's Parrot' is high literary entertainment. -- New York Times