ABSTRACT
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester in 1946 and educated at the City of London School and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied modern languages. After working as a lexicographer on the Oxford English Dictionary, he moved into journalism—as a reviewer, literary editor and TV critic. He published his first novel, Metroland, in 1980. Barnes published Metroland when he was in his mid-thirties. The two teenage protagonists, Chris and Toni, spend the early part of the novel as scornful voyeurs of the pretensions and limitations of the suburbia in which they have grown up. Petkanov is an intriguing creation and the battle of wits between him and the prosecutor is engaging, but one always has the feeling that Barnes, not a markedly political writer in his other works, is not entirely comfortable with his chosen material.
