The Lemon Table

Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011

From the hairdessing salon where an old man measures out his life in haircuts, to the concert hall where a music lover carries out an obsessive campaign against those who cough in concerts; from the woman who reads elaborate recipes to her sick husband as a substitute for sex, to the woman ''incarcerated'' in an old people''s home beginning a correspondence with an author that enriches both their lives - all Barnes'' characters, in their different ways, square up to death and rage against the dying light.