The Man in the Red Coat

　　來自曼布克獎得主、《回憶的餘燼》作者朱利安‧拔恩斯的非虛構力作，帶你一窺歐洲美好年代──

　　1885年的夏天，三個法國男人短暫停留倫敦，他們分別是一位王子、一位伯爵，以及一位什麼爵位也沒有的平民。當時候到來，他們其中的每一個人，都將在歷史上留下自己震耳欲聾的名字。他們的真實身分是誰？

　　跟隨朱利安‧拔恩斯之筆，我們透過英俊風流的賽謬爾．波西(Samuel Pozzi)之眼，穿梭於美好年代的巴黎。他是知名肖像畫大師沙金特(John Singer Sargent)畫筆下的紅衣男子，惡名昭彰又迷人的婦產科醫生。波西的醫術無懈可擊，甚至被奉為19世紀的法國婦科之父，其私德卻極具爭議，他坦承自己經常女病患過從甚密。像Pozzi這樣一把身負治癒他人之責、傷害他人之實的雙面刃，還有什麼秘辛無人知曉呢？

　　圍繞著波西的故事展開，知名人士如亨利．詹姆斯、莎拉．伯恩哈特、奧斯卡．王爾德、普魯斯特、詹姆斯．惠斯勒等人一一在書頁中現身，我們得以窺見那個充滿魅力、歡愉，同時卻也充斥偏見與排外思想的年代。拔恩斯以細膩、優美的文字，重現了畫中男子高潮迭起的人生，與一個令人目眩神迷的時代。(文/博客來編譯)

　　From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending—a rich, witty, revelatory tour of Belle Époque Paris, via the remarkable life story of the pioneering surgeon, Samuel Pozzi.

　　In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days' intellectual shopping: a prince, a count, and a commoner with an Italian name. In time, each of these men would achieve a certain level of renown, but who were they then and what was the significance of their sojourn to England? Answering these questions, Julian Barnes unfurls the stories of their lives which play out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world is Samuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life who was the subject of one of John Singer Sargent's greatest portraits. In this vivid tapestry of people (Henry James, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Proust, James Whistler, among many others), place, and time, we see not merely an epoch of glamour and pleasure, but, surprisingly, one of violence, prejudice, and nativism—with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine. The Man in the Red Coat is, at once, a fresh portrait of the Belle Époque; an illuminating look at the longstanding exchange of ideas between Britain and France; and a life of a man who lived passionately in the moment but whose ideas and achievements were far ahead of his time.