After the best-selling Arthur & George and Nothing to Be Frightened Of , Julian Barnes returns with fourteen stories about longing and loss, friendship and love, whose mysterious natures he examines with his trademark wit and observant eye.

From an imperial capital in the eighteenth century to Garibaldi’s adventures in the nineteenth, from the vineyards of Italy to the English seaside in our time, he finds the “stages, transitions, arguments” that define us. A newly divorced real estate agent can’t resist invading his reticent girlfriend’s privacy, but the information he finds reveals only his callously shallow curiosity. A couple come together through an illicit cigarette and a song shared over the din of a Chinese restaurant. A widower revisiting the Scottish island he’d treasured with his wife learns how difficult it is to purge oneself of grief. And throughout, friends gather regularly at dinner parties and perfect the art of cerebral, sometimes bawdy banter about the world passing before them.

Whether domestic or extraordinary, each story pulses with the resonance, spark, and poignant humor for which Barnes is justly heralded.

硃利安•巴恩斯（1946— ）,英國當代著名作傢。父母皆為法語教師，哥哥在牛津大學教授哲學，妻子帕特•凱伐納是著名的文學經紀人。巴恩斯畢業於牛津大學，曾參與《牛津英語辭典》的編纂工作，做過多年的文學編輯和評論傢。

“聰明”是巴恩斯作品的一貫標識。八十年代他以突破性之作《福樓拜的鸚鵡》入圍布剋奬決選，躋身英國文壇一流作傢之列。此後，獲各大文學奬項無數，三進布剋奬決選，並於2011年憑藉《終結的感覺》贏得大奬，同年獲大衛•柯恩英國文學終身成就奬。

巴恩斯也深得法國讀者的好感，他是唯一一位同時獲得法國梅第奇奬和費米娜奬的作傢，並先後榮獲法國文化部頒發的文學藝術騎士、軍官、司令勛章，堪稱在法國最受歡迎的英國作傢之一。