A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN 10 1/2 CHAPTERS Julian Barnes

A HISTORY OF THE WORLD
IN 10 1/2 CHAPTERS

Julian Barnes

 

A History of the World in 10½ Chapters is a novel by Julian Barnes. It is a fictional history of the world in which stories echo each other as themes deepen and images recur. The author also wrote Metroland for which he won the 1981 Somerset Maugham Award, and Flubert's Parrot which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was short-listed for the Booker Prize.

Each chapter is devoted to a distinct individual or entity, which is said to have witnessed or experienced a supposedly key event in the history of the world. The key to understanding the work is in drawing connections between the prima facie disconnected, and sometime trivial, stories and discovering why Barnes considers them key historical events. The stories contained in the chapters are distinguished by unique narrative styles — the story’s narrator often telling an alternate version of events from the traditional or historical. This process is referred to as fabulation.

The connections between the stories also imply a greater reality to the universe than normally perceived. It sketches the obsession of our thoughts and activities with legendary symbols. One of the many recurrent motif in the book is the portrayal of ships, shipwrecks and frigates. This is, amongst other things, an allusion to Noah's Ark — the subject of the first chapter — which plays a dominant role in the mythology of Abrahamic religions, and similar myths make an appearance in many others (e.g Hinduism) as a symbol of God's judgment of good and evil. Importantly, imagery of boats is often used to suggest that a story is an allegory. The woodworm who narrates the first Chapter questions the wisdom of appointing Noah as God's representative. The woodworm is left out of the ark, just like the other "impure" or "insignificant" species; but a colony of woodworm manages to enter the ark as stowaways and thus to survive the Great Deluge. The woodworm goes on to become one of the many connecting threads, appearing in almost every chapter, implying processes of decay, especially of knowledge and historical understanding.

The chapter "Shipwreck" is devoted to the analysis of Gericault's painting of the incident of The Raft of the Medusa. The first half narrates the incidents leading to the shipwreck and the survival of the crew members. The second half of the chapter renders a dark platonic and satirical analysis of the painting itself, and Gericault's "softening" the impact of crude reality in order to preserve the aestheticism of the work, or to make the story of what happened more palatable for the human race.

The chapter "Project Ararat" tells the story of fictional astronaut Spike Tiggler which is based on real astronaut James Irwin.

The "half-chapter" is titled "Parenthesis" and is inserted between chapters 8 and 9. What makes it different from the rest of the stories is that it has several rather vague characters and no real plot. It is the chapter in which an unknown narrator, possibly the author himself, addresses his readers and offers a philosophical discussion on love.

List of chapters

1. The Stowaway
2. The Visitors
3. The Wars of Religion
4. The Survivor
5. Shipwreck
6. The Mountain
7. Three Simple Stories
8. Upstream!

• Parenthesis (unnumbered "half chapter")

9. Project Ararat
10. The Dream

 

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