Summary
Julian Barnes
BARNES'S visit to the Book Festival came hot on the heels of the announcement that he is the bookies' favourite to win the Booker Prize for his new novel, Arthur and George. It explores Arthur Conan Doyle's involvement in the real-life case of George Edalji, a mixed- race Birmingham lawyer wrongly sentenced to hard labour for animal mutilation in 1903. "I don't regard it as a historical novel," he says, "rather a contemporary novel which happens to be set in the past." And, true to his word, rather than layering it with period detail, he enters the period through the eyes of his characters. In some ways, not much has changed. "Casual assumptions" about people of different races, and the miscarriages of justice which can result, are little different 100 years on. Barnes, above, is weary of answering questions about the extent his book is a novel, since it is based on real events. "The novel is a broad church. People don't go to Julius Caesar and say: 'That's got real people in it, that's not a play'." His research took him deep into the life of Conan Doyle, and into the reasons which inspired him to take up Edalji's case among the many which came to his attention.See the full content of this document
Extract
Book Festival Review:Julian Barnes/Ved Mehta
Ved Mehta
"People have the impression that all I've ever...See the full content of this document
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