Julian Barnes’ novel, based on a real events, traces the intersecting lives of an obscure solicitor and the world-famous creator of Sherlock Holmes.

Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late 19th-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that make sensational headlines - the ‘Great Wyrley Outrages’.

Shortlisted
The Man Booker Prize 2005
Published by
Jonathan Cape
Publication date
Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes

About the Author

Julian Barnes is the author of 13 novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Booker Prize.
More about Julian Barnes

Other nominated books by Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending
Prize winner
England, England
Flaubert's Parrot