Julian Barnes explores the narrow body of water containing the vast sea of prejudice and misapprehension which lies between England and France with acuity, humor, and compassion. For whether Barnes's English characters come to France as conquerors or hostages, laborers, athletes, or aesthetes, what they discover, alongside rich food and barbarous sexual and religious practices, is their “own” ineradicable Englishness. Introducing us to a plethora of intriguing, original, and sometimes ill-fated characters.
