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Overview
A kind of detective story, relating a cranky amateur scholar's search for the truth about Gustave Flaubert, and the obsession of this detective whose life seems to oddly mirror those of Flaubert's characters.Synopsis
A classic work by a great British author, published for the first time by Vintage.
Geoffrey Braithwaite is a retired doctor haunted by an obsession with the great French literary genius, Gustave Flaubert. As Geoffrey investigates the mystery of the stuffed parrot Flaubert borrowed from the Museum of Rouen to help research one of his novels, we learn an enormous amount about the writer's work, family, lovers, thought processes, health and obsessions. But we also gradually come to learn some important and shocking details about Geoffrey and his own life.
Peter Brooks
Mr. Barnes hasn't written this novel directly or simply. Rather, he has appropriately given us the story of an obsession with Flaubert. The result is a splendid hybrid of a novel, part biography, part fiction, part literary criticism, the whole carried off with great bio. Flaubert's Parrot' is high literary entertainment. -- New York Times