Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is, to me, one of the great quiet craftsmen of English prose. His years lexicography for the Oxford English Dictionary clearly seeped into his sentences, which carry a precision and economy you rarely see. He writes about memory, time and regret with a coolness that somehow makes the emotion land harder. The Sense of an Ending proves you do not need spectacle to devastate a reader. That his work earned acclaim across borders, from the Somerset Maugham Award to the Prix Femina, says everything about its universal pull. He is a writer to reread, not just to read, and I respect that enormously.

Name (English)

Julian Barnes

Name (Japanese)

ジュリアン・バーンズ

Reading

じゅりあん・ばーんず

Born

January 19, 1946 (age 80)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Dog

Origin

Leicester, United Kingdom

Occupation

author / translator / novelist / essayist / literary critic

University

Magdalen College

Awards & achievements

• 1981 Somerset Maugham Award
• 1983 Best of Young British Novelists
• 1985 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
• 1986 Prix Médicis essai
• 1986 E. M. Forster Award
• 1992 Prix Femina étranger
• 1993 Shakespeare Prize
• 2004 Austrian State Prize for European Literature

• Official sitehttps://www.julianbarnes.com/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian%20Barnes
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B8%E3%83%A5%E3%83%AA%E3%82%A2%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%90%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B3%E3%82%BA
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q295431

Tags

• author
• translator
• novelist

Last updated

2026-06-17

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.