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The Man in the Red Coat

Julian Barnes author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:3rd Jun '21

Should be back in stock very soon

The Man in the Red Coat cover

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2020*

'A bravura performance, highly entertaining' Evening Standard

The Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich, witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel Pozzi.

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi, society doctor, pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker - a scientific man with a famously complicated private life.

Pozzi's life played out against the backdrop of the Parisian Belle Epoque. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF COOPER PRIZE 2019**

What a deliciously intelligent entertainment this is, couched in a prose of enviable suppleness a master is at work here. -- Rupert Christiansen * Daily Telegraph *
One of his best books, very handsomely published too…[The Man in the Red Coat is] a bravura performance, highly entertaining. -- David Sexton * Evening Standard, Book of the Week *
Do not google Samuel Jean Pozzi. If you want to enjoy Julian Barnes’s The Man in the Red Coat — and believe me, it’s teeming with delights — stay away from search engines and trust the author to tell the story in his own way… punctuated by the sound of gunshot[this is a] brilliant, defiantly unconventional book. -- Adam Begley * Spectator *
The Belle Époque is brought to life through three colourful lives in this sparkling account stuffed with top fin-de-siècle tittle-tattle. -- Robbie Millen and James Marriott * The Times *The Best Books of 2019* *
Julian Barnes’s wonderful The Man in the Red Coat surges round Belle Epoque Paris… a story full of digressions, white peacocks, missing limbs, amusing adverbs and fantastic clothes. An absolute tonic for grey winter days. -- Claire Harman * Evening Standard *Books of the Year* *

ISBN: 9781529112313

Dimensions: 199mm x 131mm x 23mm

Weight: 450g

280 pages