Born on January 19, 1946 in Leicester, England, Julian Barnes is an English writer. Barnes has published short stories, novels, essays, and a translation of Alphonse Daudet's In the Land of Pain.

Barnes is the only writer who has won both the Prix Medicis and the Prix Femina (both awards from France). He has also been the recipient of the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, the San Clemente literary prize, and the 2011 David Cohen Prize for Literature.

Most recently, after being shortlisted three times previously (for his books Flaubert's Parrot in 1984, England, England in 1998, and Arthur & George in 2005), he was awarded the 2011 Man Booker Prize for his eleventh novel The Sense of an Ending.