Book Description
From a writer acclaimed by everyone from Graham Greene to
John Fowles to John Irving, a new novel, short-listed for the
Booker Prize, which The Sunday Times of London calls
"both funny and serious, a double-act that English
novels rarely manage . . . A commanding imaginative
achievement."
Picture an England where all the pubs are quaint, the
Royals behave themselves (more or less), and the cliffs of
Dover actually are white. Now imagine that the principal
national treasures--from Stonehenge to Buckingham Palace--are
grouped together on the Isle of Wight.
This is precisely the vision that Sir Jack Pitman seeks to
realize: a "destination" where tourists can find
replicas of Big Ben, Wembley Stadium, the National Gallery,
Princess Di's grave, and even Harrods (conveniently located
inside the Tower of London), and visit them all in the course
of a weekend. As this land of make-believe takes on its own
comic and horrible reality, Barnes delights us with a novel
that is at once a philosophical inquiry, a burst of mischief,
a hilarious romp, and a moving elegy about authenticity and
nationality.
Julian Barnes, according to The Sunday Times,
"has written nothing more poignant and enticing."