BARNES, Julian. Flaubert's Parrot. London: Jonathan Cape, 1984.
8vo., original green cloth with lettering and publisher's device to spine; pictorial dust wrapper with photograph of David Hockney's Felicite Sleeping with Parrot, with original wrap-around band naming this book as one on the Booker Prize Shortlist, pp. 190; a little spotted to edges, edges of wrapper lightly browned; very lightly yellowed throughout; else fine.
First edition of the author's third novel.
Flaubert's Parrot tells the story of a retired doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, who is fascinated by the French nineteenth century writer Gustave Flaubert and, on a personal level, is trying to come to terms with the death of his wife. Though these two concerns seem separate at first, as the book progresses, the relation between the two strands is brought to light, with Geoffrey and Ellen Braithwaite appearing as a contemporary English replica of Charles and Emma Bovary in Flaubert's masterpiece Madame Bovary. On the other hand, the novel also chronicle's the protagonist's search for Flaubert's stuffed parrot.
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