Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late-nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire v... » 

Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late-nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, while George remains in hard-working obscurity. But as the new century bedgins, they are brought together by a sequence of events which made sensational headlines at the time as The Great Wyrley Outrages. With a mixture of intense research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life not just this long-forgottten case, but the inner workings of these two very different men, This is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off comtemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race. Most of all it is a profound and moving meditationon the fateful differences between what we believe, what we know and what we can prove. Julian Barnes has long been recognised as one of Britain's most remarkable writers. While those already familiar with his work will enjoy its originality, its wit, its wisdom about the human condition, Arthur & George will surely find him an entirely new audience. «