Deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with a sense of the past and a sense of abroad; with France and England, life and art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, and aesthetics and redcurrant jam. Flauberts Parrot deals with Flaubert, parrots, bears and railways; with our sense of the past and our sense of abroad; with France and England, life and art, sex and death, George Sand and Louise Colet, aesthetics and redcurrant jam; and with its enigmatic narrator, a retired English doctor, whose life and secrets are slowly revealed. A compelling weave of fiction and imaginatively ordered fact, Flauberts Parrot is by turns moving and entertaining, witty and scholarly, and a tour de force of seductive originality.