Title: Flaubert’s Parrot
Author: Julian Barnes
Published: 1984
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
First edition/first impression (‘First published 1984’); UK; hardback with dust wrapper (price-clipped); covered in clear, removable protective wrapper

Near Fine/Very Good+: book itself is Near Fine, with only a tiny bit of bumping at head of spine; dust wrapper has has just a little bumping at head & foot of spine

Scarce true first edition/first printing of Julian Barnes’ third, and probably most celebrated, novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1984, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1985.

Flaubert’s Parrot recites amateur Flaubert expert Geoffrey Braithwaite's musings on his subject's life, and his own, as he tracks a stuffed parrot that once inspired the great author.

The novel follows Geoffrey Braithwaite, a widowed, retired English doctor, visiting France and the Flaubert landmarks therein. While visiting various sites related to Flaubert, Geoffrey encounters two incidents of museums claiming to display the stuffed parrot which sat atop Flaubert's writing desk for a brief period while he wrote Un coeur simple. While trying to differentiate which is authentic Geoffrey ultimately learns that (n)either could be genuine, and Flaubert's parrot could be any one of fifty that had been held in the collection of the municipal museum.

Interestingly, David Bowie, a man of unimpeachable taste, included this book in the list of his favourite 100 books, which he compiled a few years ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/01/david-bowie-books-kerouac-milligan

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