NICOLA BARKER - Booker Prize Short-Listed Novelist

Nicola Barker, Novelist

Nicola Barker's 2025 novel, TonyInterruptor - her 14th - is "not a satire per se but trains a sharp satirical eye on jazz culture (specifically a slightly stuffy, majority-white British pocket of it), academia and the mid-20s social media lens" (Buzz Magazine). The book has not yet been published in the United States, but you can now order the UK version online.

Barker's work has been translated into 25 languages and her epic novel, Darkmans, was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Her post-post-apocalyptic novel, H(A)PPY (2017) was the winner of the Goldsmith's Prize. She has been twice appeared on the Booker Prize long list: in 2012 for The Yips, the "most flamboyant piece of comic fiction ever to be set in Luton," and for Clear (2004), a novel inspired by David Blaine's dramatic suspension over East London. I Am Sovereign  (2019) won immediate critical acclaim. The Guardian's Tony Litt aptly described Barker as "literary royalty,"  The quote on the front of the book, also from The Guardian, simply states: "She really is a genius." 

Many of Barker's novels are available digitally in the US through Open Road.