Nothing to Be Frightened Of

Overview

Two years after the best-selling Arthur & George, Julian Barnes gives us a memoir on mortality that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction.

If the fear of death is "the most rational thing in the world," how does one contend with it? An atheist at twenty, an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various arguments for and against and with God, and at the bloodline whose archivist, following his parents' death, he has become--another realm of mystery, wherein a drawer of mementos and his own memories (not to mention those of his philosopher brother) often fail to connect. There are other ancestors, too: the writers--"most of them dead, and quite a few of them French"--who are his daily companions, supplemented by composers and theologians and scientists whose similar explorations are woven into this account with an exhilarating breadth of intellect and felicity of spirit.

Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly hilarious, Nothing to Be Frightened Of is a riveting display of how this supremely gifted writer goes about his business and a highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis.

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Author Information

Bio of Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England, on January 19, 1946. Both of his parents were teachers of French, and he studied French Literature and Modern Languages at Oxford University. He has held jobs as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary, a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesmen and the New Review, and a television critic. Barnes has written numerous award-winning works including Metroland, which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1980, and Flaubert's Parrot, which won both the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and a Prix Medicis. Barnes's works are noted for their literary depth, intellectual tone, and British styling. Barnes writes detective novels under the pseudonym Dan Kavanaugh and has given Kavanaugh a biographical identity of his own. Duffy, the hero of Duffy, Fiddle City, and Putting the Boot In, is a bisexual excop. In sharp contrast to the works under his real name, the detective stories are violent, comical, action-packed thrillers. Barnes resides in London. <P 030

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Additional Info

Imprint

Knopf

Filesize

1.92 MB

Number of Pages

256

eBook ISBN

9780307270252

Awards

• New York Times Notable Books of the Year