A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

A “playful, witty, and entertaining” book (The New York Times Book Review) that offers an exhilarating vision of the world, starting with the voyage of Noah's ark and ending with a sneak preview of heaven—from the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending.

It's a hilariously revisionist account of Noah's ark, narrated by a passenger who doesn't appear in Genesis. It's a sneak preview of heaven. It encompasses the stories of a cruise ship hijacked by terrorists and of woodworms tried for blasphemy in sixteenth-century France. It explores the relationship of fact to fabulation and the antagonism between history and love. In short, A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is a grandly ambitious and inventive work of fiction, in the traditions of Joyce and Calvino, from the author of the widely acclaimed Flaubert's Parrot.


“Stunning … a flawless diamond.” —Chicago Sun-Times

"Playful, witty and entertaining." —Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book Review

"Frequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, iconoclastic and a delight to read." —Salman Rushdie, Observer

"At his best, Barnes is a dazzler." —Los Angeles Times

“It’s a book to keep the reader on his toes.” —The New York Review of Books

Born in Leicester in 1946, Julian Barnes is the author of nine novels, a book of stories, and a collection of essays. He has won both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Fémina, and in 1988 was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London.