Introduction
Nicola Barker (born 30 March 1966) is an English novelist and short story writer.
She was born in Ely, Cambridgeshire, England. When she was still young her parents left England and settled in South Africa.
Typically she writes about damaged or eccentric people in mundane situations, and has a fondness for bleak, isolated settings. Wide Open and Behindlings are set respectively on the Isle of Sheppey and Canvey Island. Her 2004 novel, Clear, is set in London during David Blaine's Above the Below 44-day fast in London in 2003.
Barker's novel Darkmans won the 2008 Hawthornden Prize. Patrick Ness's review in The Guardian described the book as "phenomenally good" despite it being a "838-page epic with little describable plot, taking place over just a few days and set in...Ashford"
She's a strong adherent of Hinduism.
Novels
- Reversed Forecast (1994)
- Small Holdings (1995)
- Wide Open (1998) (winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, 2000)
- Five Miles from Outer Hope (2000)
- Behindlings (2002)
- Clear: A Transparent Novel (2004) (Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2004)
- Darkmans (2007) (Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2007)
- Burley Cross Postbox Theft (2010)
- The Yips (2012) (Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2012)
- In the Approaches (2014)
- The Cauliflower (2016)
- [1] The Observer Hot List 2010
Collections of stories
- Love Your Enemies (1993) (winner of the David Higham Prize for Fiction, joint winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award)
- Heading Inland (1996) (winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys prize)
- The Three Button Trick: Selected Stories (2001)