The Man In The Red Coat Ca Edition Julian Barnes by Julian Barnes 9780735279940, 0735279942, B07V77TC9B instant download after payment.

"A fresh, urbane history of the dramatic and melodramatic belle epoque...Finely honed biographical intuition and a novelist's sensibility make for a stylish, engrossing narrative."   -   Kirkus Reviews 

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days shopping: a prince, a count and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives, playing out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life, and the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. 

In this vivid tapestry of people (Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Proust, James Whistler, among many others), place, and time, we see not merely an epoch of glamour and pleasure, but, surprisingly, one of violence, prejudice and nativism - with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. The Man in the Red Coat is, at once, a fresh portrait of the Belle Époque; an illuminating look at the longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France; and a life of a man who lived passionately in the moment but whose ideas and achievements were far ahead of his time.