Flaubert's Parrot/History of the World Author:Julian Barnes "Flaubert's Parrot", shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984, concerns the attempts of an increasingly bemused researcher to establish certain facts about a famous French novelist and the stuffed bird which used to sit on his desk. "A History of the World" in 10 1/2 Chapters blends fact and fiction in a virtuoso kaleidoscope of vignettes from N... more »oah's time to the present. One of the author's most inventive works, it was praised by Salman Rushdie as 'frequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, iconoclastic and a delight to read'.« less