Julian Barnes didn’t just write a book. He basically set a trap. When people pick up A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, they usually expect a dry, chronological trek through dusty museum halls or a standard postmodern novel. They get neither. Instead, they get a woodworm. Specifically, a woodworm that narrates the first chapter and tells us that Noah was actually a bit of a tyrant.
It's weird. It’s brilliant.
Honestly, the book is less of a history and more of a series of obsession-fueled vignettes that keep circling back to the same anxieties: how we survive, how we lie to ourselves, and whether love is just a survival mechanism we invented to feel better about the inevitable shipwreck of life. If you’ve ever felt like history is just a collection of curated myths, Barnes is your guy.
The stowaway perspective on A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
Everything kicks off with "The Stowaway." This is where Barnes establishes the tone for the rest of the book. We aren't hearing from the heroic Noah. We’re hearing from a parasitic woodworm who wasn’t even invited onto the Ark.
The woodworm claims that the "clean" and "unclean" distinction was basically just a way for Noah to decide what to eat during the voyage. It’s a cynical, hilariously dark reimagining of the Genesis flood. Barnes uses this to suggest that history is always written by the winners, but the losers—or even the literal bugs in the floorboards—see a much grittier reality.
Think about it.
Most history books rely on official records. Barnes, through this woodworm, argues that the official record is almost always a sanitized lie. The woodworm is the ultimate "unreliable narrator," yet in the context of the book, he feels more honest than the Sunday School version of the story.
Why the "Half Chapter" is the actual heart of the book
You can't talk about A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters without obsessing over that "Parenthesis." It’s the half-chapter tucked between the ninth and tenth stories. This is where Barnes drops the fictional mask.
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He stops telling stories about woodworms or 19th-century French painters and speaks directly to you. It's an essay on love. He’s lying in bed next to his wife (the late Pat Kavanagh, a legendary literary agent), and he’s ruminating on why love matters if it can’t actually save us from history.
It’s heartbreaking.
He argues that love is necessary because it’s the only thing that isn't "history." History is public, cruel, and sweeping. Love is private, fragile, and specific. He acknowledges that love doesn't always work—in fact, it usually fails eventually—but without the idea of it, we’re just animals waiting for the next flood. This section is the anchor. Without it, the book is just a collection of clever short stories. With it, the book becomes a desperate plea for human connection in a world that doesn't care if we live or die.
Ships and disasters: The recurring nightmare
Barnes has this thing with boats. Throughout A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, we keep returning to the water. We have the Ark. We have the Medusa, the famous 1816 shipwreck where survivors resorted to cannibalism. We have the St. Louis, the real-life ship of Jewish refugees turned away from Florida in 1939.
The chapter "Shipwreck" is a masterclass in art criticism. Barnes breaks down Géricault’s painting, The Raft of the Medusa.
First, he tells the gruesome, factual history of the wreck. It was a disaster of incompetence and cowardice. Then, he shows how Géricault turned that disgusting, pained reality into "Art." He asks: How do we turn catastrophe into something beautiful? And is that transformation a form of healing or just another way to lie to ourselves about how bad things really were?
He notes that Géricault didn't paint the cannibalism. He painted the hope—the moment the survivors saw a speck of a ship on the horizon. Barnes is pointing out that we choose the frame of our history. We choose to remember the rescue, not the 13 days of butchery that preceded it.
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The court case against the woodworms
In "The Religious Wars," Barnes takes us to 16th-century France. This part is actually based on real historical legal quirks where animals were sometimes put on trial. In this case, it’s the woodworms. They are being sued for eating the legs of a bishop's chair, causing him to fall and look ridiculous.
It sounds like a joke.
But Barnes treats the legal arguments with total sincerity. The ecclesiastical court debates whether insects have rights, whether they are part of God's plan, and whether they can be excommunicated. It’s a brilliant look at how human systems (like law and religion) try to impose order on a chaotic, natural world that doesn't follow our rules. We want the universe to be a courtroom where things make sense. The woodworms just want to eat wood.
Survival is the only real metric
There is a chapter called "The Survivors" that feels eerily modern. It’s about a woman who escapes a nuclear catastrophe (or thinks she has) and sets off in a boat with her cats. She’s convinced the world is over and she’s the new Noah.
As the story progresses, you realize she’s likely suffering from extreme trauma or mental illness. Her "reality" is crumbling. Barnes is showing us that personal history is just as fragile as global history. We tell ourselves stories to survive. If the story we tell ourselves is that the world has ended, then for us, it has.
This mirrors the chapter about the St. Louis. In that chapter, we see the passengers—real people like Max Loewe—dealing with the fact that no country wants them. They are literally "excess" humanity. Barnes forces us to look at the terrifying truth that "History" isn't a progress bar moving toward a better world. It’s just a series of people trying not to drown.
The problem with the "Dream" of Heaven
The final chapter, "The Dream," is Barnes at his most satirical. A man wakes up in a version of Heaven where you can have whatever you want. You can play golf with celebrities, eat breakfast all day, and shop at endless malls.
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It sounds like a nightmare disguised as a reward.
The protagonist eventually realizes that if you can have everything, nothing matters. He meets people who have been there for centuries and are just... tired. They eventually choose to "die" for real—to cease existing entirely.
Barnes is making a point about the end of history. If history is the struggle to survive and find meaning, then "Heaven" (the end of the struggle) is the death of the soul. We need the struggle. We need the woodworms and the shipwrecks, because they are what make us human.
How to approach the book today
If you're looking to dive into this work, don't try to read it as a novel. It’s more like a gallery. Some rooms will speak to you more than others.
- Read the Parenthesis first? Some people suggest this. I say no. Save it for the middle. You need the chaos of the first few chapters to appreciate the vulnerability of Barnes’s personal interjection.
- Look up the paintings. When you get to the Géricault chapter, have a high-res image of The Raft of the Medusa open. It changes the experience entirely.
- Don't look for a "twist." There is no grand reveal where all the characters meet. The connection is thematic, not literal. The "woodworm" of doubt is the thread.
Practical takeaways from Barnes’s world
History isn't something that happened to people in wigs. It’s a process we are all currently stuck in. Barnes suggests a few ways to stay sane:
- Question the narrator. Whether it's a news anchor, a textbook, or your own memory, ask who is benefiting from the story being told.
- Accept the "Half Chapter." Life is messy and doesn't always fit into a neat 10-chapter structure. The "extra" bits—the moments of love and quiet—are usually the most important.
- Art is a filter, not a mirror. We use movies, books, and paintings to make sense of tragedies, but we have to remember the filter is there. The real event was much messier.
- Embrace the woodworm. Perfection is a lie. There will always be something eating away at the structure of our "perfect" lives or societies. That’s just part of the ecosystem.
Ultimately, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters is a reminder that we are all stowaways on a very crowded boat. We might as well try to be kind to each other while we're afloat.
To get the most out of Julian Barnes's work, compare his retelling of the Medusa incident with the factual account in The Wreck of the Medusa by Alexander McKee. Seeing how history is warped into fiction and then into art is the best way to understand the core of Barnes's philosophy.
Next Steps
To deepen your understanding of these themes, look into the "Postmodern Historiography" movement. It sounds fancy, but it's basically just the study of how we turn "what happened" into "a story." Specifically, research the works of Hayden White, who argued that history is just another form of narrative prose. This will give you the academic backbone to support Barnes's more literary "woodworm" perspective.