Cross Channel

First edition. 8vo. Pp. [viii], 211, [5 (blank)]. Navy blue cloth boards, blocked in red to spine; black endpapers. Jacket Design Tracey Winwood.

Preceded by an issue of 500 numbered proofs in cream card wraps, designed to resemble a traditional French Gallimard paperback edition. A special limited edition, comprising 50 signed copies, was issued concurrently with the trade edition in celebration of Barnes's 50th birthday.

Author's first collection of short stories spanning several centuries of the Anglo-French divide. 'Interference', 'Experiment' and 'Evermore' first appeared in the New Yorker, while 'Gnossienne' and 'Dragons' were first published in Granta.

'Evermore' – a haunting tale of an Englishwoman's obsessive visits to her brother's grave at the Somme – was also printed privately by Palawan Press in two limited editions, of 50 and 150 copies each, both featuring prints by Howard Hodgkin.

Signed by Author to title page.

Shortlisted three times previously for the Man Booker Prize (Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005)), Barnes finally won it in 2011 with The Sense of an Ending. "Barnes est délicieux." –Jerome Garcin, L'Evénement du Jeudi