Jules Renard (1864 - 1910) was a French author and member of the Academie Goncourt. He wrote plays, journalism and fiction, as well as his famous and well-loved Journal. Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize and Flaubert's Parrot. He has also written a book of essays on French themes Something to Declare, a collection of Franco-British short stories, Cross Channel, and translated Alphonse Daudet's In the Land of Pain. In 2017, he was awarded the Legion d'honneur. Theo Cuffe has translated Voltaire's Candide and a collection of his philosophical tales (Micromegas & Other Short Fictions) for Penguin Classics.
Well over 100 years later, his writing is still fresh because it retains the tang of curiosity... He writes with such grace, and with such attention, that before long you begin to feel his Journals are not just writings about life, but life itself. * Mail on Sunday *