Something to Declare

For anyone who loves France (or just feels strongly about it) comes a “beautifully written” collection of essays ( The New York Times Book Review) on the country and its culture—from the bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending. Julian Barnes’s appreciation extends from France’s vanishing peasantry to its hyper-literate pop singers, from the gleeful iconoclasm of nouvelle vague cinema to the orgy of drugs and suffering that is the Tour de France. Above all, Barnes is an