Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the 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 himself.

A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flaubert's Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour-de-force of seductive originality.

‘Unputdownable... A mesmeric original’ Philip Larkin

‘Delightful and enriching...a book to revel in!’ Joseph Heller

‘A wry and graceful book... Unfailingly sharp and often very funny’ Sunday Times

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR TO MARK THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF FIRST PUBLICATION

Barnes manages to be erudite but extremely funny too… You never know what Barnes is going to do next and I admire that.’ * Daily Express *
Delightful and enriching... A book to revel in
A gem: an unashamed literary novel that is also unashamed to be readable, and broadly entertaining. Bravo!
Endless food for thought, beautifully written... A tour de force
Unputdownable... A mesmeric original
A wry and graceful book... Unfailingly sharp and often very funny * Sunday Times *
A dazzling entertainer * New Yorker *
Delightful and enriching... A book to revel in!
Julian Barnes' wry and graceful book, part novel, part stealthy literary criticism, traces the marks Flaubert made on a forgetting world. The writing is unfailingly sharp and often very funny, and among the best prose I have read in years * Sunday Times *
A delight... Handsomely the best novel published in England in 1984 * John Fowles *

Julian Barnes is the author of fourteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Booker Prize, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and five works of non-fiction, including Nothing to Be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life. He was awarded the David Cohen Prize for lifetime contribution to literature in 2011, and the Légion d'honneur in 2017.