Beginning with an unlikely stowaway's account of life on board Noah's Ark,A History of the World in 10 Chapterspresents a surprising, subversive, fictional history of earth told from several kaleidoscopic perspectives. Noah disembarks from his ark but he and his Voyage are not forgotten: they are revisited in on other centuries and other climes - by a Victorian spinster mourning her father, by an American astronaut on an obsessive personal mission. We journey to the Titanic, to the Amazon, to the raft of theMedusa, and to an ecclesiastical court in medieval France where a bizarre case is about to begin...

This is no ordinary history, but something stranger, a challenge and a delight for the reader's imagination. Ambitious yet accessible, witty and playfully serious, this is the work of a brilliant novelist.

Julian Barnesis the author of twelve novels, includingThe Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and two books of non-fiction,Nothing to be Frightened Ofand theSunday Timesnumber one bestsellerLevels of Life. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

'Funny, ironic, erudite, surprising, and not afraid to take a dive overboard into the depths of sorrow and loss. My novel of the year' Nadime Gordimer