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Darkmans
by Nicola BarkerShortlisted 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.
Five Miles from Outer Hope
by Nicola BarkerThe sly and subversive sixth book from Nicola Barker, one of our most funny and anarchic writers.
H(A)PPY
by Nicola Barker*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 YEARA TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEARAN INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEARFrom 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.
Heading Inland
by Nicola BarkerHeading Inland is a funny, broody, saucy collection of stories about the kind of people you sometimes meet but might prefer to ignore.
I Am Sovereign
by Nicola Barker__________________________________________'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 BARRYCharles, 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
In the Approaches
by Nicola Barker‘Open yourself up again to all that terrible light and savage bliss and deafening reverberation …’
Love Your Enemies
by Nicola BarkerFrom the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker, the short stories in ‘Love Your Enemies’ present a loving depiction of the beautiful, the grotesque and the utterly bizarre in the lives of overlooked suburban Britons.
Reversed Forecast
by Nicola BarkerThe first novel from the brilliantly unconventional Nicola Barker is a tale of gambling, allergies, music and dogs, set in some of London’s less scenic locations.
Reversed Forecast / Small Holdings
by Nicola BarkerTwo novels from Nicola Barker, published together in a single volume. ‘Small Holdings’: it’s all go in a little oasis of nature, in this stirring tale of subterfuge among the shrubbery – plus ‘Reversed Forecast’, the prize-winning first novel from England’s greatest female comic novelist.
Small Holdings
by Nicola BarkerHilarious, 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.
The Three Button Trick: Selected Stories
by Nicola BarkerThe best short stories from perhaps England’s finest young female comic writer.
Wide Open
by Nicola BarkerWinner of IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 2000, Wide Open is the first of Nicola Barker’s Thames Gateway novels.
The Yips
by Nicola BarkerThe hilarious Man Booker-longlisted novel from the author of ‘Darkmans’ and ‘The Burley Cross Postbox Theft’.
Another World
by Pat BarkerIn Pat Barker's Another World, the First World War casts its shadow down the generations.At 101 years old, Geordie, a proud Somme veteran, lingers painfully through the days before his death. His grandson Nick is anguished to see this once-resilient man haunted by the ghosts of the trenches and the horror surrounding his brother's death. But in Nick's family home the dark pressures of the past also encroach on the present. As he and his wife Fran try to unite their uneasy family of step- and half-siblings, the discovery of a sinister Victorian drawing reveals the murderous history of their house and casts a violent shadow on their lives...'Gripping in the best, most exquisite sense of the word - as if something wicked were holding you in its clutches' Mail on Sunday'Brilliant... without question the best novel I have read this year... once again, World War I extends its dark shadows across Pat Barker's extraordinary writing' Val Hennessy, Daily Mail'One of the best things she has ever done' Ruth Rendell'Utterly compelling... she is a novelist who probes deep, revealing what people prefer to keep hidden' Allan Massie, Scotsman'Demonstrates the extraordinary immediacy and vigour of expression we have come to expect from Barker . . . brilliant touches of observation, an unfailing ear for dialogue, a talent for imagery that is darting and brief but unfailingly apt... this is a novel that doesn't allow you to miss a sentence' Barry Unsworth, The New York Times Book Review'Intensely feeling... Geordie is a beautifully realised character, tough, humorous, and finally enigmatic' Helen Dunmore, The Times
Blow Your House Down (Virago Modern Classics #Vol. 415)
by Pat BarkerA serial killer stalks prostitutes with profound and unexpected consequences in this riveting novel from the Booker Prize-wining author of Ghost RoadA city and its people are in the grip of a killer who is roaming the northern city, singling out prostitutes. The face of his latest victim stares out from every newspaper and billboard, haunting the women who walk the streets. But life and work go on. Brenda, with three children, can't afford to give up while Audrey, now in her forties, desperately goes on 'working the cars'.And then, when another woman is savagely murdered, Jean, her lover, takes desperate measures...
Border Crossing: A Novel
by Pat BarkerBorder Crossing is Pat Barker's unflinching novel of darkness, evil and society.When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer. Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tom become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back?'Brilliantly crafted. Unflinching yet sensitive, this is a dark story expertly told' Daily Mail'A tremendous piece of writing, sad and terrifying. It keeps you reading, exhausted and blurry-eyed, until 2am' Independent on Sunday'Resolutely unsensational but disquieting . . . Barker probes not only the mysteries of 'evil' but society's horrified and incoherent response to it' Guardian'Rich, challenging, surprising, breathtaking' The Times
Double Vision: A Novel
by Pat BarkerDouble Vision is Pat Barker's thought-provoking Booker Prize-winning novel of modern warfare.Provocative, intense and deeply moving, Double Vision is a powerful story of one man's quest to find redemption amidst the horror of twenty-first-century war. Returning to Afghanistan after his photographer friend is killed by a sniper, war reporter Stephen Sharkey seeks release from his nightmares in an England seemingly at peace with itself.Questioning man's inhumanity to man both abroad and at home, and whether love really can be the great redeemer, Double Vision is a searing novel of conflict in modern times.'Full of brooding tension. Barker is one of our most significant contemporary novelists' Daily Telegraph'Barker writes superbly. The reader is drawn on, from page to page' Economist'Barker has a quite extraordinary ability to combine complexity and clarity and to make both seem parts of the same whole' Sunday Times'The characters grab hold at the beginning and never loosen their grip. Barker holds us by the sheer beauty of her writing' Financial TimesPat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been filmed, The Eye in the Door, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize. The trilogy featured the Observer's 2012 list of the ten best historical novels. She is also the author of the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class, and Toby's Room. She lives in Durham.
The Eye in the Door: The Second Volume Of The Regeneration Trilogy (Regeneration #2)
by Pat BarkerThe Eye in the Door is the second novel in Pat Barker's classic Regeneration trilogy.WINNER OF THE 1993 GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE.London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in the Ministry of Munitions. But his private encounters with women and men - pacifists, objectors, homosexuals - conflict with his duties as a soldier, and it is not long before his sense of himself fragments and breaks down. Forced to consult the man who helped him before - army psychiatrist William Rivers - Prior must confront his inability to be the dutiful soldier his superiors wish him to be ...The Eye in the Door is a heart-rending study of the contradictions of war and of those forced to live through it.'A new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male and female, soldiers and civilians'A. S. Byatt, Daily Telegraph'Every bit as waveringly intense and intelligent as its predecessor'Sunday Times'Startlingly original . . . spellbinding'Sunday Telegraph'Gripping, moving, profoundly intelligent . . . bursting with energy and darkly funny' Independent on SundayOther titles in the trilogy:RegenerationThe Ghost Road
The Ghost Road (Regeneration #3)
by Pat BarkerThe Ghost Road is the final instalment in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy.WINNER OF THE 1995 BOOKER PRIZE.1918, the closing months of the war. Army psychiatrist William Rivers is increasingly concerned for the men who have been in his care - particularly Billy Prior, who is about to return to combat in France with young poet Wilfred Owen. As Rivers tries to make sense of what, if anything, he has done to help these injured men, Prior and Owen await the final battles in a war that has decimated a generation ...The Ghost Road is the Booker Prize-winning account of the devastating final months of the First World War.'An extraordinary tour de force. I'm convinced that the trilogy will win recognition as one of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction' Jonathan Coe'Powerful, deeply moving' Barry Unsworth, Sunday Times'Harrowing, original, unforgettable' Independent'A triumph' Sunday TimesOther titles in the trilogy:RegenerationThe Eye in the Door
Life Class (Life Class Trilogy Ser. #2)
by Pat BarkerLife Class is the first novel in Pat Barker's Life Class Trilody - a powerful and unforgettable story of art and warSpring, 1914. The students at the Slade School of Art gather in Henry Tonks's studio for his life-drawing class. But for Paul Tarrant the class is troubling, underscoring his own uncertainty about making a mark on the world. When war breaks out and the army won't take Paul, he enlists in the Belgian Red Cross just as he and fellow student Elinor Brooke admit their feelings for one another. Amidst the devastation in Ypres, Paul comes to see the world anew - but have his experiences changed him completely?'Triumphant, shattering, inspiring'The Times'Barker writes as brilliantly as ever... with great tenderness and insight she conveys a wartime world turned upside down'Independent on Sunday'Vigorous, masterly, gripping'Penelope Lively, Independent'Extraordinarily powerful' Sunday TelegraphOther titles in the trilogy:Toby's RoomNoonday
Liza's England (Virago Modern Classics #42)
by Pat BarkerDauntless Liza Jarrett, born at the dawn of the twentieth century, is now in her eighties, frail and facing eviction with her cantankerous parrot Nelson, when she is visited by Stephen, a young gay social worker. As she learns to trust him, she recalls her life - her embittered, exhausted mother, her shell-shocked spiritualist husband, her beloved son and chaotic daugter. Their friendship, deepening with the unfolding of their stories, comes to sustain Liza through her last battle and brings new courage to Stephen.
Noonday (Life Class Trilogy Ser. #3)
by Pat BarkerIn Noonday, Pat Barker - the Man Booker-winning author of the definitive WWI trilogy, Regeneration - turns for the first time to WWII.'Afterwards, it was the horses she remembered, galloping towards them out of the orange-streaked darkness, their manes and tails on fire...'London, the Blitz, autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on the blacked-out city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races from bomb sites to hospitals trying to save the lives of injured survivors, working alongside former friend Kit Neville, while her husband Paul works as an air-raid warden. Once fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art, before the First World War destroyed the hopes of their generation, they now find themselves caught in another war, this time at home. As the bombing intensifies, the constant risk of death makes all three of them reach out for quick consolation. Old loves and obsessions re-surface until Elinor is brought face to face with an almost impossible choice.Completing the story of Elinor Brooke, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville, begun with Life Class and continued withToby's Room, Noonday is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life in her most powerful novel since the Regeneration trilogy.'Bold, hard-hitting, unforgettable... a virtuoso rendition of the bombing, as huge swathes of London blaze away with the brightest of bright lights... Barker shows us how the city's finest moment was indubitably also its most terrifying, with luminous and unsparing insight.' Independent on Sunday'Barker's command of detail and gift for metaphor are as sharp as ever... As a tribute to those who dared and suffered on the home front, Noonday is in the first rank.' Antony Garner, Mail on Sunday'Narrative jumps colourfully alive, fizzes with energy.' Michele Roberts, Independent'Tremendously good.' Daily Mail'Pat Barker's Noonday marked the end of another war trilogy which shows no end to her talent in describing how conflicts rupture the soul.' Arifa Akbar, IndependentPraise for Pat Barker:'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature.' Independent 'A brilliant stylist... Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation.' Sunday Telegraph'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world.' The GuardianOther titles in the trilogy:Life ClassToby's Room
Regeneration (Regeneration #1)
by Pat BarkerA Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women SelectionThe modern classic of contemporary war fiction - a Man Booker Prize-nominated examination of World War I and its deep legacy of human traumas.'A brilliant novel. Intense and subtle' Peter Kemp, Sunday TimesCraiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers's job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. Pat Barker's Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men.This is the first novel in Pat Barker's Man Booker Prize-winning Regeneration Trilogy:I: RegenerationII: The Eye in the DoorIII: The Ghost Road'A vivid evocation of the agony of the First World War and a multi-layered exploration of all wars. A fine anthem for doomed youth' Time Out'A novel of tremendous power' Margaret Forster 'Unforgettable' Sunday Telegraph'One of the strongest and most interesting novelists of her generation' Guardian
The Regeneration Trilogy: Regeneration; The Eye In The Door; The Ghost Road (The\wwi Trilogy Ser. #1)
by Pat BarkerThe Regeneration Trilogy is Pat Barker's sweeping masterpiece of British historical fiction. 1917, Scotland. At Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, army psychiatrist William Rivers treats shell-shocked soldiers before sending them back to the front. In his care are poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. . .Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road follow the stories of these men until the last months of the war. Widely acclaimed and admired, Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy paints with moving detail the far-reaching consequences of a conflict which decimated a generation.'Harrowing, original, delicate and unforgettable' Independent'A new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male and female, soldiers and civilians. Constantly surprising and formally superb' A. S. Byatt, Daily Telegraph'One of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction' Jonathan CoePat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration (1991); which was made into a film of the same name; The Eye in the Door (1993), which won the Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road (1995), which won the Booker Prize, as well as the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class and Toby's Room. She lives in Durham.
The Silence of the Girls: A Novel
by Pat BarkerThere was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent - till now.Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness history forgot.'Make[s] you reflect on the cultural underpinnings of misogyny, the women throughout history who have been told by men to forget their trauma... You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening StandardPraise for Pat Barker:'Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation' Sunday Telegraph'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature' Independent'Barker is a writer of crispness and clarity and an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human' Herald'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world' Guardian