Staring at the Sun

Jean Serjeant, the heroine of Julian Barnes's wonderfully provocative novel, seems ordinary, but has an extraordinary disdain for wisdom. And as Barnes--winner of the Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending--follows her from her childhood in the 1920s to her flight into the sun in the year 2021, he confronts readers with the fruits of her relentless curiosity: pilgrimages to China and the Grand Canyon; a catalogue of 1940s sexual euphemisms; and a glimpse of technology in the twenty-first century (when The Absolute Truth can be universally accessed).

Elegant, funny and intellectually subversive, Staring at the Sun is Julian Barnes at his most dazzlingly original.

"Brilliant . . . a marvelous literary epiphany."--Carlos Fuentes, The New York Times Book Review

"Barnes's literary energy and daring are nearly unparalleled."--New Republic

About the Author:

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 M dicis and the Prix F mina, and in 1988 was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He lives in London.