Where to start with Julian Barnes

British novelist, born 1946. Won the Booker Prize in 2011.

Best Julian Barnes book to start with: The Sense of an Ending (2011), on 4 of the 16 lists it could have made.

The Sense of an Ending, which won the Booker Prize in 2011, is the Barnes to read first. It is short enough for a single sitting or two, and it gets its effects from a careful, slightly unreliable narrator looking back on his school friends.

Arthur and George, shortlisted for the Booker in 2005, is the best next step if you want a longer story. It is built around a real case that drew in Arthur Conan Doyle, and it moves like a mystery.

Flaubert’s Parrot, shortlisted in 1984, is the one for readers who like books about books. A retired doctor sets out to find which of two stuffed parrots belonged to Flaubert, and the search turns into an argument about biography. It is playful and a little odd, and it is more fun if you know Madame Bovary. England, England, shortlisted in 1998, is a satire about a businessman who builds a theme park of the whole country on the Isle of Wight. It is the broadest comedy of the four, so read it last.