Changing My Mind

'Provocative and entertaining.'

'Provocative and entertaining.'

'Exploring how he has changed (or not changed) his mind over the decades on politics, books, age and memories, Barnes offers a short autobiography of his mind, as well as providing some fascinating insights into the society we have become . . . The writing is as typically elegant as is to be expected from Barnes'

'The Booker Prize winner, now 79 years old, offers a witty, personal reflection on the ways we continually convince ourselves that “we are consistent human beings rather than seaweed tossed around by the tides." '

‘It’s always heartening, given shortened attention spans, to find that the long essay still exists in book form. And hats off to Notting Hill Editions which still commissions contemporary authors to write them. Julian Barnes’s Changing My Mind is a pleasing example of the genre.’

'In his new and beautifully argued book of short essays, [Julian Barnes] celebrates the “human privilege” of changing our beliefs, in relation to diverse subjects such as memory, ageing and literary taste.'

‘ Changing My Mind reminds us that humility, like a muscle, atrophies without use . . . But, as Barnes has the courage to show in his latest book, it must be tested regularly, and kept accessible enough to be employed at the ready, lest we find ourselves inexplicably, but undeniably, mistaken.’

Julian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels including The Sense of an Ending , which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story . He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number-one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing to Be Frightened Of , which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d’honneur.