Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is a writer of novels, short stories, and essays who currently lives in London. He also publishes crime fiction under the pen name Dan Kavanagh. In his childhood, he attended the City of London School, and as a young man he studied modern languages at Magdalen College, Oxford. After graduating university, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary, then as a reviewer, literary editor, and television critic at the New Statesman, the New Review, and the Observer. He received the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending, and three of his novels were previously shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 1984, 1998, and 2005. He has also received many other rewards and honors, including the 1981 Somerset Maugham Award and the 2011 David Cohen Prize for Literature. In 2004, Barnes was made Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and in 2017 the French President awarded him the rank of Officier in the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur.