First published 2019
Samuel Pozzi walks Paris in his signature red leather shoes—surgeon, libertine, and confidant to the era's most powerful figures. A pioneering medical innovator who treated everyone from aristocrats to courtesans, Pozzi navigates a world of shifting social boundaries and dangerous secrets. As France transforms through the late 19th century, he performs groundbreaking surgeries, conducts scandalous affairs, and becomes a nexus of artistic and medical revolution. Surviving multiple duels and romantic intrigues, Pozzi represents a singular moment when medicine, sexuality, and social ambition collide in the most sophisticated city on earth. Julian Barnes traces the extraordinary life of a man who embodied the complex pulse of a vanishing world.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, 19th-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-figures, social-transformation
Setting: Paris
Period: Late 19th Century
208 pages · Hardcover · Jonathan Cape