Departure(s)

The new book from the Booker Prize-winning Julian Barnes, about looking back, facing the future, and coming to the end of lifeDeparture(s) is a work of fiction – but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.It is the story of a man called Stephen and a woman called Jean, who fall in love when they are young and again when they are old. It is the story of an elderly Jack Russell called Jimmy, enviably oblivious to his own mortality.It is also the story of how the body fails us, whether through age, illness, accident or intent. And it is the story of how experiences fade into anecdotes, and then into memory. Does it matter if what we remember really happened? Or does it just matter that it mattered enough to be remembered?It begins at the end of life – but it doesn’t end there. Ultimately, it’s about the only things that ever really mattered: how we find happiness in this life, and when it is time to say goodbye.

Julian Barnes is the author of fourteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Booker Prize, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and five works of non-fiction, including Nothing to Be Frightened Of and the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life. He was awarded the David Cohen Prize for lifetime contribution to literature in 2011, and the Légion d'honneur in 2017.