Julian Barnes, one of Britain’s most celebrated novelists, has announced that his latest book, Departure(s), will be his last novel, marking the end of a remarkable literary era. Yet, as he approaches his 80th birthday and prepares for the publication of this final work on January 22, 2026, Barnes is far from retiring his pen completely. Instead, he’s turning his focus to journalism, expressing both optimism and concern about the future of literature in a rapidly changing world.
“You get a sense of having played your tunes,” Barnes explained in an interview, reflecting on his decision to step away from fiction. “As I wrote this book, I both thought, this feels like the last book, and it should be.” For readers who have followed him since his debut in 1980 with Metroland, the news is bittersweet. Over the course of 14 previous novels—three of which became films, translated into 50 languages, and selling more than 10 million copies—Barnes has built a reputation for blurring the lines between fact and fiction, always with a wry, philosophical touch.
His latest novel, Departure(s), is no exception. Described as part fiction, part memoir, and part essay, the book centers on a love story between two characters who part as students and reconnect years later. The narrator, a writer named Julian, has blood cancer and has lost his wife to a brain tumor—details that closely mirror Barnes’s own life. In 2008, Barnes’s wife, the renowned literary agent Pat Kavanagh, died just 37 days after being diagnosed with a brain tumor. The real-life author has blood cancer, a condition he manages with daily chemotherapy.
“My condition is stable and it’s kept stable by taking chemo every day of my life,” Barnes shared, adding that he is “completely at ease” with his illness and supports assisted dying, though he notes, “that’s not related to my cancer.” Death, he admits, has long fascinated him, both in theory and in the lived experience. “I have had a lifelong engagement with death, both theoretical and actual, and have written about it many times,” he writes in Departure(s). Far from making him morose, this awareness has deepened his appreciation for life’s fleeting joys. “If you’re aware that it’s all going to come to an end suddenly, possibly, or after a long illness, you appreciate more the hours and the minutes that you’re going to be alive.”
Despite the deeply personal elements in Departure(s), Barnes is quick to point out that the novel is not a straightforward autobiography. When asked if the characters are based on real people, he responded with characteristic ambiguity: “That’s for me to know and my biographer to find out.” The book’s title itself—bracketed as Departure(s)—hints at multiple meanings. “Because there’s one main departure, which is our departure from life, and then there are several others referred to in the books, which are departures from love and so on,” Barnes explained, smiling at the slightly enigmatic choice.
Looking back on his career, Barnes recalls the excitement of being named one of Granta’s top 20 young British novelists in 1983, a moment that signaled a new era for British fiction. “It was a strange time because it was a time when fiction suddenly became sexy, and also suddenly money was available,” he reminisced. His breakthrough came with Flaubert’s Parrot in 1984, a novel that showcased his playful, erudite style and deep engagement with French literature. In 2011, he won the Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending, after being shortlisted three times previously. France recognized his contributions with the Legion d’Honneur in 2017, honoring his literary achievements and his engagement with French culture.
Though he’s leaving novel-writing behind, Barnes is not pessimistic about the future of the form. “I decline to be pessimistic about the future of the novel,” he said, pointing to the vibrant new generations of writers making their mark. He remains an enthusiastic reader and supporter of contemporary fiction, seeing promise in the diversity and innovation of today’s literary scene.
Yet, Barnes is also deeply concerned about the impact of artificial intelligence on writing and creativity. The proliferation of AI-generated content, he argues, poses a real threat to the originality and integrity of literature. In a recent interview, Barnes recounted being shown an opening paragraph generated by an AI chatbot in his style. The machine produced a sentence that began with a nuanced thought about memory but quickly devolved into what Barnes described as “plagiarism and banality.” He critiqued the AI’s attempt: “If I’d written that sentence, ‘He’d always believed that memory behaved like a courteous guest,’ I’d stop there because all the stuff about ‘loitering hands in pockets, humming tunelessly in the corners of his mind’ is just crass.”
For Barnes, the problem with AI-generated writing is not just technical but emotional. “It doesn’t make you laugh and it doesn’t make you cry. It doesn’t move you. It’s just a pastiche,” he asserted. He is calling for stronger legal protections to ensure that writers’ intellectual property is not scraped and reproduced without proper compensation. “They need to have some sort of law which says you can’t just scrape things and then publish it as an original work.”
Barnes’s commitment to the craft of writing is evident in his methods. He still begins his novels in notebooks, scribbling ideas and dialogue by hand, before moving to his trusty electric typewriter—a machine whose hum, he says, “suits the way that I think as a writer.” Only after several drafts does he transfer his work to a computer. This analogue approach, in an age of digital shortcuts, is a testament to his belief in the slow, deliberate process of creation.
Despite the challenges posed by technology and the inevitability of change, Barnes’s outlook remains fundamentally hopeful. He will miss writing fiction, he admits, but he believes his decision is the right one. “I will miss it, but at the same time it would be foolish to do it if I didn’t do it with full conviction... I think it’s just a correct decision.” As he writes in Departure(s) to his readers, “Your presence has delighted me.”
As Barnes embarks on this new chapter, his voice—sharp, humane, and deeply engaged with the world—continues to resonate, both as a chronicler of his times and as a passionate advocate for the enduring power of literature.
