num_pages: 311
description: The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending takes us on a rich witty tour of Belle Epoque Paris via the life story of the pioneering surgeon Samuel PozziIn the summer of 1885 three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days shopping. One was a Prince one was a Count and the third was a commoner with an Italian name who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargents greatest portraits. The commoner was Samuel Pozzi society doctor pioneer gynaecologist and free-thinker  a rational and scientific man with a famously complicated private life.Pozzi's life played out against the backdrop of the Parisian Belle Epoque. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical narcissistic decadent and violent a time of rampant prejudice and blood-and-soil nativism with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine.The Man in the Red Coat is at once a fresh and original portrait of the Belle Epoque  its heroes and villains its writers artists and thinkers  and a life of a man ahead of his time. Witty surprising and deeply researched the new book from Julian Barnes illuminates the fruitful and longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France and makes a compelling case for keeping that exchange alive.
language: English
title: The Man in the Red Coat
publisher: Vintage Digital