TheMan Booker Prize-winningauthor ofThe Sense of an Endingtakes us on a rich, witty, revelatory tour of Belle Époque Paris, via the life story of the pioneering surgeonSamuel Pozzi."A fresh, urbane history of the dramatic and melodramatic belle epoque...Finely honed biographical intuition and a novelist's sensibility make for a stylish, engrossing narrative."   -Kirkus ReviewsIn the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days 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 Barnesunfurls the stories of their lives, playing out against the backdrop of the Belle Époque in Paris. Our guide through this world isSamuel Pozzi, the society doctor, free-thinker and man of science with a famously complicated private life, and the subject of one ofJohn Singer Sargent'sgreatest 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 Coatis, 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.