Booker shortlist freebie

Music to the ears of any publisher’s or literary agent’s offices this afternoon: “one of our books has been shortlisted by the Man Booker Prize panel”.

And in our particular case it’s the selection of Darkmans by Nicola Barker that’s making us so gleeful. So…you’ve probably read everything you possibly can about fellow shortlistee, Ian McEwan, but in case you’re now rushing off to Waterstones to stock up on the Big 6, here’s more on the very talented Nicola Barker and her book.

Darkmans is the third of Nicola Barker’s visionary narratives of the Thames Gateway – and incidentally, it’s not the first time she’s been in with a chance of the coveted prize. The previous book, Clear, made the grade with a Booker longlisting in 2004.

Clare Reihill is the editor here at 4th Estate and she says

Darkmans is a very modern book, set in Ashford (a ridiculously modern town), about two very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It’s also a book about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. And the main character? The past, which creeps up on the present and whispers something quite dark — quite unspeakable — into its ear…

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.

Want more?
Here’s the first chapter of Darkmans so you can get a taste for it:

Darkmans chapter 1 (192KB PDF Document)