Nicola Barker is the author of more than ten novels, including The Yips (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), Darkmans (shortlisted for the Booker and the Ondaatje Prize and winner of the Hawthornden Prize), Clear (longlisted for the Booker), and Wide Open (winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and three story collections, including Love Your Enemies (winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award). Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. She lives in London.
"Maddening, funny, playful and beautiful...Barker has once again
invigorated an old form -- the historical biographical novel --
through electric wit and sheer bedazzlement."
--The Washington Post"[Barker's] prophet's tale is peppered with
ironic asides, haikus, dizzying all-caps, and transcribed sound
effects to create a kind of antiquarian post-modernism, a
contemporary Tristram Shandy."
--New York Magazine"While matters of religion generally carry an
impression of weightiness, Barker deftly juggles reverence and
humor. . . . An experiment in reordering time, with which Kali is
traditionally associated, Barker's The Cauliflower is as
multi-lobed and densely clustered as the vegetable from which it
takes its name. A nutritious treat for the intellect and the funny
bone."
--Shelf Awareness, (starred review)"Irreverent ... Beneath the
jaunty surface, the novel explores important questions about the
nature of religious experience."
--Publishers Weekly"Respectful, playful, and often
entertaining--though just as often puzzling. Barker's fans will
enjoy the outing, forgiving her quirks."
--Kirkus Reviews"[An] imaginative tour de force ... [Barker] throws
a literary hand grenade into the form of the historical novel as we
know it ... Barker seems to want to undermine the very core of the
historical novel: the idea that an act of imaginative empathy can
give us access to what things were like in the past ... The result
is typically atypical, expectedly unexpected and inexplicably good.
She really is a genius."
-Guardian"[A] vibrant, funny, garrulous and lovely book. It is a
celebration of spirituality and faith ... Perfectly balanced
between clownish irreverence and hushed respect for the
numinous."
-Sunday Times "Tristram Shandy meets magical realism ... This is an
extremely ambitious book, playful, maddening, overlong,
thought-provoking and rich. As an investigation of faith - which is
what is must surely be - that's not a bad way to go."
- Financial Times"A confection . . . . Comic and elaborate . . . .
A vivid panorama."
--Times Literary Supplement"The Cauliflower brims with rich
delicacies of arcana and ephemera...Throughout Barker's novel, the
present is laid strangely over the past, forcing the reader to peer
askance at the action from an angle, like a historical voyeur ...
[Barker] has created a zany, frustrating, brilliant work."
-Telegraph"Typically audacious ... These pages showcase Barker at
her best: the hairpin, full-throttle flight of an audacious
imagination ... Intriguing, exhilarating, perplexing."
-Observer "One of the most excitingly and exhaustively non-linear
novelists around ... She opens up a mind-set usually
incomprehensible to secular westerners ...This exuberantly
imaginative novel about mysticism takes flight with panache."
-Herald "Nicola Barker makes her own rules...In the tale of a man
who utterly rejected not just conventional society but the
structure of time and space itself, she has found a wonderful
reflection of her own boggling talent."
-Literary Review"Nicola Barker is both prodigiously talented and
admirably fearless ... Barker describes her book as 'truly little
more than the sum of its many parts.' It turns out to be far more
than that; a freehand, jokey sort of spiritual journey, an
admiration, and a parody of faith, orchestrated by Barker with an
unfailing eye for the comic opportunity ... Strange, febrile and
utterly unique ... A story packed with vitality, wit, sly charm and
astonishing energy."
-Spectator"Here, as everywhere else in her work, this most
brilliantly unhinged of British writers does whatever the hell she
likes. . . . Illuminating, tiresome, joyful, exhausting and
hilarious . . . Deeply researched . . . . Watching Barker's
garrulous, profound, silly and bitingly intelligent mind at play is
one of the greatest and most contagious delights in modern British
fiction."
-New Statesman
Ask a Question About this Product More... |