Darkmans [Paperback]

‘This is the work of a very fine storyteller indeed.’ The Times

‘The writing is often hilarious. Barker carves up the suburban dinner party savagely, and anatomises the dodgiest builder on Earth…Nicola Barker’s writing is hugely attractive, because it conjures images and ideas from a tremendous wealth of inspiration. It is the product of a powerful, sprawling imagination.’ Daily Telegraph

‘A loud shout of glorious, untidy, angry, joyous life. Barker is a great, restless novelist, and “Darkmans” is a great, restless novel. At the end of 838 blinding, high-octane pages, I was bereft that there weren’t 838 more.’ Guardian

'When a new novel by Nicola Barker arrives, there is a host of reasons to break into a smile. Chief among them is that she is one of the most exhilarating, audacious and, for want of a better word, ballsy writers of her generation. And, in a publishing terrain that often inhibits ambition and promotes homogeneity, there is nobody writing quite like her.’ Observer

‘A visionary epic.’ Sam Leith, in the Spectator ‘Books of the Year’

Shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize

An epic novel of startling originality which confirms Nicola Barker as one of Britain's most exciting literary talents.

This is a rowdy, riotous tale, a tale in which the medieval past takes on a face, name, and occupation and roams around the humdrum town of Ashford, bringing chaos to the lives of those it picks on. No one is safe: not upstanding Beede and his drug-dealing son, nor teen chav Kelly who zestily finds God (much to the dismay of the Reverend responsible), or Gaffar, the tiny, amorous Kurd with an unusual fear of salad.

Darkmans is a world where language snaps and crackles like static, twitching with barely containable energy. Past and present mingle and blur, and the lines between fantasy and reality, sanity and madness are continually rubbed out and redrawn - but by whose hand? And what about the grand scheme of things - is life a coincidence or is it a pattern, plotted by all-seeing, unknown forces?

The third of Nicola Barker's visionary narratives of the Thames Gateway, Darkmans is a very modern book about very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It's also about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007 and following on from Wide Open (winner Dublin IMPAC award 2000) and Behindlings it confirms Nicola Barker as one of Britain's most original, innovative and exciting literary talents.

Nicola Barker was born in Ely in 1966 and spent part of her childhood in South Africa. Among her seven previous novels are ‘Darkmans’ (short-listed for the 2007 Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden) and ‘Wide Open’ (winner of the 2000 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). She has also written two prize-winning collections of short-stories, ‘Love Your Enemies’ and ‘Heading Inland’, and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in east London.