num_pages: 288
description: Before his brain began to shrink, Barney Panofsky clung to two cherished beliefs. Life was absurd, and nobody truly understood anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a 'wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence and probably a murderer'. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting and plagiarising, as his memory plays tricks on him - and on the reader. Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off 3 wives - the enigmatic Clara, whom he drove to suicide in Paris in 1952; the garrulous Second Mrs Panofsky; and finally Miriam who stayed married to him for decades before running off with a sober academic. Houdini-like, Barney slides from crisis to success, from lowlife to highlife in Montreal, Paris and London, his outrageous expolits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback - the murder charge that he goes on denying to the end.
language: English
title: Barney's Version
titlecomplete: Barney's Version
genres: Classics, Humor, Jewish, Novels, Literature, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Fiction, Canadian Literature, Canada
ratings_count: 12100
places: Quebec (Québec), Paris
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: Scotiabank Giller Prize, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Commonwealth Writers' Prize
category: Best Book in Caribbean and Canada, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1357027200000
name: Premi Llibreter de narrativa
category: Altres literatures
publisher: Chatto & Windus