Podcasts

The Vintage Podcast: Julian Barnes reads The Only Story

‘Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.’

Author Julian Barnes reads from his forthcoming new novel...

06 January 2018

One of our most treasured storytellers Julian Barnes gives us a reading from the forthcoming The Only Story. His novel The Sense of an Ending won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 and was made in to a film staring Jim Broadbent in 2017. His last novel The Noise of Time was a Sunday Times bestseller and his new novel, following nineteen year old Paul, is published in February 2018.

The Only Story is a deeply moving novel by one of fiction’s greatest mappers of the human heart.

Here, read by the author, are the first few pages...

Julian Barnes notes
The Only Story

  • The Only Story

  • **THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**

    Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.

    First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul doesn’t know anything about that at nineteen. At nineteen, he’s proud of the fact his relationship flies in the face of social convention.

    As he grows older, the demands placed on Paul by love become far greater than he could possibly have foreseen.

    Tender and wise, The Only Story is a deeply moving novel by one of fiction’s greatest mappers of the human heart.

  • Buy the book

Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 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 three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and The Man in the Red Coat, which was shortlisted for the 2019 Duff Cooper Prize. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

Julian Barnes

Read more

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Extracts

The Only Story by Julian Barnes

Man Booker prize winner Julian Barnes' latest novel The Only Story is a poignant and tender portrayal of first love. Read on for an extract
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Extracts

A letter from Dodie Smith to Julian Barnes on the first publication of Metroland

An extract from the archive edition of Metroland

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