The versatile Julian Barnes (Leicester, 1946) will become, on 23 October 2026, the second Briton to receive the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, following in the footsteps of Doris Lessing in 2001.
Published in Spain by the Anagrama publishing house, Barnes has worked as a lexicographer, columnist and literary and television critic before devoting himself entirely to literature. A Modern Languages graduate from the University of Oxford, he already holds France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the E.M. Forster Award of the American Academy.
After rising to fame with his third novel, ‘Flaubert’s Parrot‘ (1986), for which he was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Barnes began to stand out for his blend of fiction and essay, which gave him a style unlike that of his contemporaries. The Briton would have to wait 25 years to win that prize, with ‘The Sense of an Ending’.
During a recent visit to Barcelona on 16 May, the award winner spoke about what will probably be his last novel, ‘Despedidas’ (stressing that this does not mean he will stop writing in other genres), as well as about a diagnosis of “manageable” blood cancer, in his own words.
Each Princess of Asturias Award comes with a Joan Miró sculpture, an official diploma, a badge and a cash prize of €50,000. This year the winners already announced include Arts (Patti Smith), Communication and Humanities (Studio Ghibli) and Social Sciences, awarded to the pro-European scholar Timothy Garton Ash.