This document provides biographical information about author Julian Barnes and summarizes his postmodern novel "A History of the World in 101⁄2 Chapters". It describes Barnes' career and awards. For the novel, it outlines the plot structure involving 10 chapters that use irony and playfulness to offer alternative accounts of historical events. The chapters jump between different time periods and genres to comment on the construction of history. Key symbols and themes involving God, the sea, survival, and perspectives on history are discussed.

1. 19.01.1946 - …
Julian Patrick Barnes

2. Early life
*City of London School 1957-1964
*Magdalen College, Oxford
*Worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English
Dictionary supplement for three years
*Worked as a reviewer and literary editor for
the New Statesman and the New Review
* Television critic, first for the New Statesman and
then for The Observer 1979-1986

3. Career
*The first novel – Metroland 1980
*In 1989 Barnes published A History of the
World in 10½ Chapters
*In 1991, he published Talking It Over
*Arthur & George 2005
*In 2013 Barnes published Levels of Life

4. Postmodernism
The term Postmodern literature is
used to describe certain tendencies
in post-World War II literature. It is
both a continuation of the
experimentation championed by
writers of the modernist period and a
reaction against Enlightenment ideas
implicit in Modernist literature.

5. Some features of
postmodernism:
*the erosion of the boundaries between "high" art
and "low" art
*the development of numerous hybrid genres
*the authors write not in one certain genre, but
they combine and mix them
*«death of author» - they now do not press their
opinion on a reader, but only give the story to
them
*irony, playfulness and black humor

6. Awards and honors
*2012 Europese Literatuurprijs
*2011 Costa Book Awards, shortlist, The Sense of an
Ending
*2011 Booker Prize, winner, The Sense of an Ending
*2011 David Cohen Prize for Literature.
*2008 San Clemente literary prize
*2004 Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
*2004 Austrian State Prize for European Literature
*1985 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize
*1993 Shakespeare Prize
*1992 Prix Femina Étranger, winner, Talking It Over
*1986 E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy
and Institute of Arts and Letters
*1981 Somerset Maugham Award

8. A History of the World
in 10½ Chapters
Plot

9. Chapter 1.
"The Stowaway"
It is an alternative
account of the
story of Noah's Ark
from the point of
view of the
woodworm, who
were not allowed
onboard and were
stowaways during
the journey.

10. Chapter 2.
"The Visitors"
This chapter
describes the
hijacking of a
cruise liner,
similar to the
1985 incident
of the Achille
Lauro.

11. Chapter 3.
"The Wars of Religion"
This chapter
reports a trial
against the
woodworms in a
church, as they
have caused the
building to
become unstable.

12. Chapter 4.
"The Survivor"
It is set in a world in
which the Chernobyl
disaster was "the
first big accident".
Journalists report
that the world is on
the brink of nuclear
war. The protagonist
escapes by boat to
avoid a nuclear
holocaust.

13. Chapter 5, "Shipwreck"
It is an analysis of Géricault's painting, The
Raft of the Medusa. The first half narrates
the historical events of the shipwreck and the
survival of the crew members. The second
half of the chapter analyses the painting
itself. It describes Géricault's "softening" the
impact of reality in order to preserve the
aestheticism of the work, or to make the
story of what happened more palatable.

15. Chapter 7.Three Simple
Stories: Voyage of the
Damned

16. “History repeats itself, the
first time as tragedy, the
second time as farce.”

17. Napoleon “Hegel remarks somewhere
that all great, world-historical facts and
personages occur, as it were, twice. He
has forgotten to add: the first time as
tragedy, the second as farce.”

18. Chapter 8.
“Upstream!”

19. Parenthesis: the heart
isn‘t heart-shaped

20. “We get scared by history; we
allow ourselves to be bullied
by dates.”

21. “History isn’t what happened. History is just what
historians tell us. There was a pattern, a plan, a
movement, expansion, the march of democracy; it
is a tapestry, a flow of events, a complex narrative,
connected, explicable. One good story leads to
another.”

22. “We must believe that it is 99 per cent
obtainable; or if we can’t believe this we
must believe that 43 per cent objective truth
is better than 41 per cent.”

23. Chapter 6. The Mountain
Chapter 9. Project Ararat

24. Chapter 10. The Dream:
postmodern Heaven

25. “ I went on several cruises; – I learned canoeing,
mountaineering, ballooning; –
I got into all sorts of danger and escaped; – I explored the
jungle; – I watched a court case (didn’t agree with the
verdict); – I tried being a painter (not as bad as I thought!)
and a surgeon; – I fell in love, of course, lots of times; – I
pretended I was the last person on earth (and the first).”

26. Characters
*Noah, appears in The Stowaway, The Mountain
*Woodworm, appears in Stowaway, The Wars
of Religion
*Black Thunder, appears in The Visitors
*Franklin Hughes, appears in The Visitors
*Kathy, appears in The Survivor
*Gericault, appears in The Shipwreck
*Bartholome Chassenee, appears in The Wars
of Religion
*Amanda Fergusson , appears in The Mountain
*Miss Logan , appears in The Mountain
*God, appears in All

27. The main themes
*God and God’s sixth-day creation
*The sea
*Survival
* The role of the great figures in
history
*Different views on historical
events

28. Symbols

30. The Dove VS The
Raven