Author Julian Barnes confirms new novel will be his last | Julian Barnes

Booker Prize-winning author Julian Barnes has confirmed that his new novel Departure(s) will be his last, saying he feels like he has “played all my tunes”.

“One way to think about how long you’re going to keep going is, ‘As long as they’re still publishing you,’” said Barnes, who celebrates his 80th birthday on Monday and whose works include 15 novels and 10 non-fiction works over his 45-year career.

“But that can be misleading. I shouldn’t write a book just because it’s going to be published. You have to keep going until you’ve said everything you need to say, and that’s where I got to.”

“I’m not going to stop writing because I was a journalist all my life before I became a novelist. So I’ll do journalism and criticism and things like that. But in terms of books, this is the end of me.” he told the Telegraph.

Focusing on her role as an intermediary for Stephen and Jean, two unnamed friends who fall in love but later break up, Departures has been described as a hybrid of memoir, essay, and fiction that brings together many of the themes in Barnes’ work, including memory, love, friendship, aging, and death.

The author, who was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer six years ago and was treated with chemotherapy in the form of pills every day, said of his disease: “It’s a tie right now.”

He added: “But as long as it remains stable, it contributes to the weakening of the organism. And I’m used to it.”

Barnes, who was widowed at 62 when his wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, died of a brain tumor in 2008, announced last August that he had secretly remarried publisher Rachel Cugnoni, whom he had known for almost 30 years and who had been his partner for the past eight years.

His first novel, Metroland, was published in 1980, but his real breakthrough came in 1984 with his third book, Flaubert’s Parrot, which was shortlisted for the Booker prize. He was shortlisted twice more, for England, Great Britain and Arthur & George, before winning the Booker prize in 2011 for The Sense of an Ending. He also writes crime fiction under the name Dan Kavanagh.

He told the Telegraph: “I’ve led a lucky life. If you’d told me when I was 30 that I’d be writing a lot of books that a lot of people would love to read, I’d have been surprised. So I’m very pleased with it.”

When asked if he was afraid of death, Barnes, an avowed atheist, replied: “I used to be afraid of death, but after spending nearly 10 years with a body that was falling apart or not behaving well, I don’t feel resigned to it. But dying in your 80s is certainly different than dying in your 40s or 50s. But losing your life just while you’re holding on… who knows?”