Darkmans

Nicola Barker lives and works in east London. She was the winner of the David Higham Prize for Fiction and joint winner of the Macmillan Silver Pen Award for 'Love Your Enemies', her first collection of stories. Her second story collection, 'Heading Inland', received the John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. Her novel 'Wide Open' won the IMPAC Prize in 2000, and 'Clear' was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004. She is one of Granta's 'Best Young British Novelists'of the decade.

'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.' Alex Clark, Observer 'Inventive, witty and well staged.' Hugo Barnacle, Sunday Times 'There is a constant sense she might launch us into the minds of one of her psychotics and leave us there, and this gives her books a fearsome energy.' Independent 'Rich, sensual, almost synaesthetic powers of description and association.' Times Literary Supplement 'Each of her works brims with electricity, energy and invention, with rude humour, originality and contrariness. Who else but Barker would produce an 838-page epic with little describable plot, taking place over just a few days and set in -- wait for it -- Ashford? For that's what "Darkmans" is, and it is phenomenally good. 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.' Patrick Ness, Guardian 'An idiosyncratic, witty and utterly original vision of Albion.' Independent 'Her books are experimental in style, endlessly inventive. Finely plotted, multi-stranded narratives, packed with big ideas.' Susan Mansfield 'Nicola Barker's new novel, "Darkmans", is an ambitious, daring, delightful and compelling work. If any young British writer -- male or female -- is dreaming big nightmares and taking jaw-dropping risks, it's Barker! ["Darkmans"] is twisted and braided with an intricacy so delicate you barely notice the links until the whole web engulfs you!Barker has specialised in eccentric characters in overlooked locations, but "Darkmans" adds an epic intensity to her oeuvre. Although it is more than 800 pages long, it is fearfully gripping: I stayed up in the