Julian Barnes

Nothing to Be Frightened Of opens with a sentence people have quoted at Julian Barnes ever since: he does not believe in God, but he misses him. Published in 2008, it circles his fear of dying without ever settling the question, and it proves to be as much about a family as about belief. His parents, both teachers of French, are examined at length, and his elder brother Jonathan, a philosopher, is quoted disagreeing with him throughout, which gives the book a second voice and keeps it from becoming a sermon. Barnes was born in Leicester in 1946, read modern languages at Magdalen College, Oxford, and spent three years on the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary before publishing fiction. Flaubert's Parrot (1984) made his name, and The Sense of an Ending won the Booker Prize in 2011 after three earlier shortlistings. He also wrote crime novels as Dan Kavanagh, a name borrowed from the literary agent Pat Kavanagh, whom he married in 1979 and who died in October of the year this book appeared.