Author Julian Barnes confirms that his new novel will be his last Julian Barnes

Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes has confirmed that his new novel, Departure, will be his final book, saying he feels “I have played all my notes”.

“One way to think about how long you’re going to keep going is, ‘As long as they keep publishing your work,’” said Barnes, who celebrates his 80th birthday on Monday, and whose 45 years of work include 15 novels and 10 non-fiction works.

“But that can be misleading. I shouldn’t write a book just because it’s going to be published. You should keep going until you’ve said everything you want to say, and you’ve reached that point.”

He told The Telegraph: “I’m not going to stop writing, because I was a journalist all my life, before I became a novelist. So I’ll do journalism and reviews and things like that. But as far as books go, this is my last book.”

Departures, which focuses on his role as mediator between two anonymous friends, Stephen and Jean, who become lovers but then separate, has been described as a mixture of memoir, essay, and fiction, bringing together many of the themes of Barnes’ work, including memory, love, friendship, aging, and death.

“Right now, it’s a tie,” the author, who was diagnosed six years ago with a rare form of leukemia that is controlled by taking chemotherapy in pill form every day, said of his illness.

He added, “But as long as it remains stable, it only contributes to weakening the body. I am used to that.”

Barnes was a widower and 62 when his wife, literary agent Pat Kavanagh, died of a brain tumor in 2008, and he recently revealed that he had secretly remarried last August to Rachel Cognoni, a publisher he had known for nearly 30 years and who had been his partner for the past eight years.

His first novel, Metroland, was published in 1980, but his breakthrough came in 1984 with his third book, Flaubert’s Parrot, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He was shortlisted twice more, for England and England and Arthur and George, before winning the Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending in 2011. He also writes crime novels under the name Dan Kavanagh.

He told The Telegraph: “I’ve had a lucky life. If you had told me when I was 30 that I would be writing a lot of books that a lot of people would love to read, I would have been amazed. So I’m very happy about that.”

When Barnes, an outspoken atheist, was asked if he feared death, he replied: “I used to be terrified of death, but after spending about 10 years with a body that’s breaking down or not behaving well, I don’t feel like giving up on it. But obviously it’s different when you die in your 80s than in your 40s or 50s. But losing your life when you’re just holding on… who can say?”