Nicola Barker

From the award-winning author of 'Clear 'comes an epic novel of startling originality. If History is just a sick joke which keeps on repeating itself, then who exactly might be telling it, and why? Could it be John Scogin, Edward IV's infamous court jester, whose favourite pastime was to burn people alive -- for a laugh? Or could it be Andrew Boarde, Henry VIII's physician, who kindly wrote John Scogin's biography? Or could it be a tiny Kurd called Gaffar whose days are blighted by an unspeakable terror of -- uh -- salad? Or a beautiful, bulimic harpy with ridiculously weak bones? Or a man who guards Beckley Woods with a Samurai sword and a pregnant terrier? 'Darkmans' is a very modern book, set in Ashford (a ridiculously modern town), about two very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It's also a book about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. And the main character? The past, which creeps up on the present and whispers something quite dark -- quite unspeakable -- into its ear. 'Darkmans' is the third of Nicola Barker's visionary narratives of the Thames Gateway. Following on from 'Wide Open' (winner Dublin IMPAC award 2000) and 'Behindlings' it confirms Nicola Barker as one of Britain's most original and exciting literary talents.

Darkmans

The hilarious Man Booker-longlisted novel from the author of 'Darkmans', Nicola Barker. 2006 is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Tiger Woods' reputation is entirely untarnished and the English Defence League does not exist yet. Stormclouds of a different kind are gathering above the bar of Luton's less than exclusive Thistle Hotel. Among those caught up in the unfolding drama are a man who's had cancer seven times, a woman priest with an unruly fringe, the troubled family of a notorious local fascist, an interfering barmaid with three E's at A-level but a PhD in bullshit, a free-thinking Muslim sex therapist and his considerably more pious wife. But at the heart of every intrigue and the bottom of every mystery is the repugnantly charismatic Stuart Ransom - a golfer in free-fall. Nicola Barker's Man Booker-longlisted novel 'The Yips' at once a historical novel of the pre-Twitter moment, the filthiest state-of-the-nation novel since Martin Amis's 'Money' and the most flamboyant piece of comic fiction ever to be set in Luton.

The Yips

__________________________________________ 'One of the funniest, most finely achieved comic novels, even by her own standard ... I think it's a masterpiece.' ALI SMITH 'I think Nicola Barker is incapable of a dull page. [Her work] is unified by its spirit of adventure.' KEVIN BARRY Charles, a forty-year-old boutique teddy bear maker and wearer of ironic t-shirts, is trying - and failing - to sell his small, characterless house in Llandudno. His estate agent Avigail, whose name is definitely not Abigail, is trying - in vain - to rein in Charles's most unhelpful eccentricities, especially his repeated recounting to prospective buyers of a failed burglary that took place twelve years ago. When Wang Shu and her daughter Ying Yue view the house, Wang Shu is mysteriously struck by a falling oyster shell - the first in a series of seemingly innocuous events distort the reality of the characters' lives and cause them to question their very existence. As religious epiphanies bump up against declarations of love, the characters begin to sabotage the fictional world they inhabit, causing our entire understanding of the book - and of the boundaries between fiction and real life - to be radically upended. A tour de force that twists the novel into new shapes, I Am Sovereign sees Nicola Barker at her most joyful, provocative and riotous. __________________________________________ 'She really is a genius.' GUARDIAN 'Life-affirming hilarity - Evelyn Waugh on ecstasy.' NELL ZINK 'A madly brilliant little book that asks who at any point is in control of what. I loved it.' DAILY MAIL 'Nicola Barker's wildness and capacity for the absurd often delight me.' SARAH MOSS 'What an audacious writer Nicola Barker is ... In an era when plot is king, Barker has typically, joyously, dispensed with one ... Barker's pleasure in the novella feels defiant.' EVENING STANDARD 'I Am Sovereign is bursting with energy, compassion and humour.' LITERARY REVIEW 'Barker is a writer in a class of her own ... A work of coruscating intelligence, of deep humanity.' OBSERVER 'A riotous burst of a novel that scrutinises the nature of fiction with the lightest of touches.' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'A bracing, brilliantly bonkers comic novel ... This is freewheeling fiction that delights in the visual.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Barker's writing is very, very funny, both ha ha and strange ... Fans of Ali Smith's "Seasonal Quartet" will enjoy a similarly arch, detached view on the banality of contemporary Britain ... A gloriously audacious blend of, well, the deep and the trite.' INDEPENDENT

I Am Sovereign

*WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2017* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2018* *LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018* A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR AN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR From the internationally acclaimed, Man Booker-shortlisted Nicola Barker comes a new novel, a post-post apocalyptic story that overflows with pure creative talent. Imagine a perfect world where everything is known, where everything is open, where there can be no doubt, no hatred, no poverty, no greed. Imagine a System which both nurtures and protects. A Community which nourishes and sustains. An infinite world. A world without sickness, without death. A world without God. A world without fear. Could you...might you be happy there? H(A)PPY is a post-post apocalyptic Alice in Wonderland, a story which tells itself and then consumes itself. It's a place where language glows, where words buzz and sparkle and finally implode. It's a novel which twists and writhes with all the terrifying precision of a tiny fish in an Escher lithograph – a book where the mere telling of a story is the end of certainty.

H(A)PPY

As winner of the highly prestigious IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award, Wide Open beat out books by such masters as Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, and Michael Cunningham. It is truly extraordinary work of fiction, taking readers into a small English seaside town, and into the minds and hearts of its remarkable inhabitants -- a man named Ronny, weed killer by trade, who has some strange things in common with a man he finds dangling from a bridge; Nathan, the son of a pedophile, who toils in the Underground's Lost Property department, endlessly logging missing items; Sara, purveyor of her family boar farm, and Lily, her teenage daughter, tragically born with unformed organs and blood that refuses to clot. Starkly original and at turns hilarious, sad, and hopeful, Wide Open brilliantly displays Nicola Barker's delightfully singular literary talent.

Wide Open

"From Man Booker-shortlisted, IMPAC Award-winning author Nicola Barker comes an exuberant, multi-voiced new novel mapping the extraordinary life and legacy of a 19th-century Hindu saint. He is only four years older, but still I call him Uncle, and when I am with Uncle I have complete faith in him. I would die for Uncle. I have an indescribable attraction towards Uncle. It was ever thus. To the world, he is Sri Ramakrishna--godly avatar, esteemed spiritual master, beloved guru (who would prefer not to be called a guru), irresistible charmer. To Rani Rashmoni, she of low caste and large inheritance, he is the brahmin fated to defy tradition and preside over the temple she dares to build, six miles north of Calcutta, along the banks of the Hooghly for Ma Kali, goddess of destruction. But to Hriday, his nephew and longtime caretaker, he is just Uncle--maddening, bewildering Uncle, prone to entering ecstatic trances at the most inconvenient of times, known to sneak out to the forest at midnight to perform dangerous acts of self-effacement, who must be vigilantly safeguarded not only against jealous enemies and devotees with ulterior motives, but also against that most treasured yet insidious of sulfur-rich vegetables: the cauliflower. Rather than puzzling the shards of history and legend together, Barker shatters the mirror again and rearranges the pieces. The result is a biographical novel viewed through a kaleidoscope. Dazzlingly inventive and brilliantly comic, irreverent and mischievous, The Cauliflower delivers us into the divine playfulness of a 21st-century literary master"--

A Novel

The Cauliflower

Audacious, original, clever, poignant -- these are just a few words that describe the writing of Nicola Barker, a talented, award-winning author whose work brings to mind Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Maragaret Atwood. Now nineteen of her finest short stories have been complied into one brilliant, delightful readable volume. It takes young Carrie twenty-one years and a chance meeting with an eighty-three-year-old widow to realize she fell victim to her husband's "Three Button Trick." The main character in "Wesley" must work through his troubled childhood in a series of episodes involving masses of eels, an imaginary friend named Joy, and an unmentionable incident with an emu-owl. From erotic encounters behind clothing racks to a kleptomaniac with his organs on the wrong side, this daring and gifted writer never fails to surprise us, entertain us, and make us think.

The Three Button Trick and Other Stories

A Transparent Novel

Clear

HPPY

Wesley, spurting with kinetic energy, nasty wit, and kindness to animals, ought to be a star. Or so it seems to those who nip at his heels, turn up everywhere he goes, and lie in wait for him around every corner. They are his followers -- he calls them Behindlings. And they make quite an ensemble, with their own questionable intentions, irritating habits, and weird manners. But they bury all disagreement in the common pursuit of their prize, their Wesley. Then there are those who simply stay put. Catherine Turpin lies defiantly in the bed she makes for herself while, outside, her failings are broadcast widely, painted on walls, even. When one of Wesley's newest followers, Jo Bean, turns out to be more interested in confronting Catherine than sticking with the behindlings, plots that have been twisted up come undone. With Behindlings, the inimitable Nicola Barker takes a character who is perhaps her most compelling creation to date, and lets him run off with her readers.

Behindlings

In the summer of 1971, a charismatic family seeks refuge in the quiet, English coastal backwater of Pert Level. Thirteen years later, a shifty individual turns up in Pert Level, apparently determined to get to the bottom of the bizarre and ultimately tragic events that unfolded in the aftermath of the family's arrival.

In the Approaches

On September 5, 2003, illusionist David Blaine entered a small Perspex box adjacent to London's Thames River and began starving himself. Forty-four days later, on October 19, he left the box, fifty pounds lighter. That much, at least, is clear. And the rest? The crowds? The chaos? The hype? The rage? The fights? The lust? The filth? The bullshit? The hypocrisy? Nicola Barker fearlessly crams all that and more into this ribald and outrageous peep show of a novel, her most irreverent, caustic, up-to-the-minute work yet, laying bare the heart of our contemporary world, a world of illusion, delusion, celebrity, and hunger.

From the award-winning author of Darkmans comes a comic epistolary novel of startling originality and wit.

Burley Cross Postbox Theft

The Three Button Trick And Other Stories

Věra Chase

Doširoka otevřené

H(a)ppy

The sly and subversive sixth book from Nicola Barker, one of our most funny and anarchic writers.

Five Miles from Outer Hope

Hilarious, poignant and frequently surreal, Small Holdings is a is a comedy of errors from a neglected corner of everyday life by the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker.

Small Holdings

Nicola Barker conjures up a fantastical world where an unborn baby escapes an unsuitable mother through a belly-button zip, a disgruntled job applicant steals his interviewer's garden pond and a new father feeds his hand to an owl. Her imagination is truly weird and wonderful, but what makes these stories work so well is that they are based on reality - a woman falls in love with her husband because his buttons are done up wrongly, a bitter old woman tries to trick a tramp, a man frees eels from an East End pie shop, a bride throws a tantrum on her wedding day. This collection brings to life a world which simmers just below the surface of the imagination, proving again that Nicola Barker is one of the most original young writers of her generation

Nicola Barker

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