India, May 8 -- This is from Primo Levi's The Periodic Table (1984): "We are here for this - to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to stand the blows and hand them out. We must never feel disarmed: nature is immense and complex, but it is not impermeable to the intelligence; we must circle around it, pierce and probe it, look for the opening or make it."

Levi is hinting at taking control of the narrative, at presenting the complexity of the task at hand without being squeamish about the unpleasantness it may attract. Such is the fate of Julian Barnes' Departure(s), which is marketed as his last.

The Booker winning novelist was diagnosed with a "rare type of blood cancer", according to The Guardian, in 2020. Before the release of De...