Departure

A book by Julian Barnes

Published

This title released on January 20, 2026 

Readers also liked these books:

Departure Release Date: January 20, 2026
Check availability on Amazon
As an Amazon Associate we may earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.

On the occasion of his eightieth birthday, one of our great novelists delivers a playful and profound work about memory, love and the writer’s endgame.

Shortly after our narrator, a writer named Julian, begins this compact book by discussing the workings of involuntary memory, he interrupts himself with a bulletin to the “There will be a story—or a story within the story—but not just yet.”

Of course, whether Departure(s) is mostly a fictional story or not, there is a lot of its author in it, including Barnes’s reckoning with the blood disorder he has been living with since he was diagnosed in 2020, his long preoccupation with dying and grief and his mordant sense of the indignities and lost opportunities we’re prey to in love. The story he promises to deliver is a love story, that of two friends he met at university in the 1960s, that time of touted but rarely experienced sexual freedom. Julian played matchmaker to Stephen (tall, gangling, uncertain) and Jean (tart and attractive); as the third wheel, he was deeply invested in the success of their love and insulted when they broke up. Time is swift, and forty years later, he tries again, watching as their rekindled affair produces joys, betrayals and disappointments of a different order.

Barnes uses both his novelistic memory and his (real?) personal diary entries to examine not just the quixotic relationship of Jean and Stephen but his writer’s eye upon it, and how his efforts on their behalf add up in the end. Despite promising them he’d never write about them, he breaks that promise to fulfill another one, amply, to his readers, in this delightful and poignant novelist’s game that only Julian Barnes knows how to play.

Excitement Rating
[Average Rating: 0]

Genre: Literary Fiction

Julian Barnes

More books from Julian Barnes

For book clubs & dedicated readers


Book club reading journal for tracking discussions and releases

Track your reading and discussions

If you’re following upcoming releases or reading along with a book club, this Book Club Journal helps you keep notes, track discussions, and plan what to read next.

View the Book Club Journal on Amazon

Recommended Book Release Guides
Excitement Rating
[Average Rating: 0]

Similar Books Liked By Our Readers

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

New books trending now

A Rebel and a Traitor
The Wolf (Raven #5)
Pride (The Bloody MacGregors #2)
The House of Lies (Alardyce #5)