Nothing to Be Frightened of

NATIONAL BESTSELLER ANew York TimesBest Book of the Year Deadly serious, masterfully playful, and surprisingly funny,Nothing to Be Frightened Ofis a riveting, highly personal tour of the human condition and what might follow the final diagnosis. A meditation on mortality as only Julian Barnes could write it: one that touches on faith and science and family as well as a rich array of exemplary figures who over the centuries have confronted the same questions he now poses about the most basic fact of life: its inevitable extinction. An atheist at twenty, an agnostic at sixty, Barnes looks into the various arguments for and against and with God, and at his own bloodline, which has become, following his parents' death, another realm of mystery.Nothing to Be Frightened Ofreveals how we all might go about living with the inevitable.

Julian Barnes is the author of ten novels, two books of stories, two collections of essays, and a translation of Alphonse Daudet’s In the Land of Pain. His honors include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2004 he was named Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French ministry of Culture. He lives in London.