BARNEY'S VERSION by Mordecai Richler Hardcover First Edition Signed By Author

This was Mr. Richler's tenth and final novel (he died in 2001). It is, like most of his fiction, highly entertaining. The book won the Giller Prize. This book also won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. Richler was awarded the Order of Canada in 1999. Before his brain began to shrink, Barney Panofsky clung to two cherished beliefs. Life was absurd, and nobody truly understood anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a 'wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence and probably a murderer'. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting and plagiarizing, as his memory plays tricks on him - and on the reader. Ebullient and perverse, he has seen off 3 wives - the enigmatic Clara, whom he drove to suicide in Paris in 1952; the garrulous Second Mrs Panofsky; and finally Miriam who stayed married to him for decades before running off with a sober academic. Houdini-like, Barney slides from crisis to success, from lowlife to highlife in Montreal, Paris and London, his outrageous exploits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback - the murder charge that he goes on denying to the end. This great novel was adapted into a movie in 2010. The book is in very good condition with no tears or hand writing in any of it's pages. The dust jacket is also in good condi