A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters - Couverture souple

Barnes, Julian

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0099540126 ISBN 13 : 9780099540120

Editeur : Vintage, 2009

Synopsis

Beginning with an unlikely stowaway's account of life on board Noah's Ark, A History of the World in 10ￜ Chapters presents a surprising, subversive, fictional history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they are revisited in on other centuries and other climes - by a Victorian spinster mourning her father, by an American astronaut on an obsessive personal mission. We journey to the Titanic, to the Amazon, to the raft of the Medusa, and to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin...This is no ordinary history, but something stranger, a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is the work of a brilliant novelist.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011

Beginning with an unlikely stowaway's account of life on board Noah's Ark, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters presents a surprising and subversive fictional-history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they are revisited in on other centuries and other climes - by a Victorian spinster mourning her father, by an American astronaut on an obsessive personal mission. We journey to the Titanic, to the Amazon, to the raft of the Medusa, and to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin...

This is no ordinary history, but something stranger; a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is the work of a brilliant novelist.

Revue de presse :

"Frequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, iconoclastic, and a delight to read. Barnes is like a worldly, secular reincarnation of a medieval gloss-writer on sacred texts, and what he offers us is the novel as footnote to history, as subversion of the given, as brilliant, elaborate doodle around the margins of what we think about what we think we know" (Observer)

"You will want to read it again and again, and why not? - there's nothing around to touch it" (Literary Review)

"There is more moral and intellectual fodder, and more jokes, here than you will read in a month of Sundays... storytelling and teaching which captivate, liberate, and above all, enchant" (Financial Times)

"This is a novel like no other - provocative, superbly funny, a wonderful and most original work...gives the reader a sense of ebullient, whooping joy" (Guardian)

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Vintage
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0099540126
• ISBN 13: 9780099540120
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 320