Levels of Life

Levels of Life

Summary

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed…

In Levels of Life Julian Barnes gives us Nadar, the pioneer balloonist and aerial photographer; he gives us Colonel Fred Burnaby, reluctant adorer of the extravagant Sarah Bernhardt; then, finally, he gives us the story of his own grief, unflinchingly observed.

This is a book of intense honesty and insight; it is at once a celebration of love and a profound examination of sorrow.

**ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY**

Reviews

  • It is extraordinary... [It] would seem to pull off the impossible: to recreate, on the page, what it is like to be alive in the world.
    Emma Brockes, Guardian

About the author

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 Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.
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