*Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2004
*A Granta Best of British Novelist 2003
*Winner of the IMPAC PRIZE for her novel
Wide Open
On 5th September 2003, New York Illusionist David Blaine entered a small perspex box adjacent to the River Thames and commenced starving himself. Forty-four days later – on 19th October – he left the box, four stone lighter. That much, at least, is clear.
And the rest? The crowds? The chaos? The hype? The rage? The rows? The lust? The filth? The bullshit? The hypocrisy?
Nicola Barker fearlessly crams all that and more into this ribald and outrageous peep show of a novel, her most irreverent, caustic, up-to-the-minute work yet, laying bare the heart of our contemporary world, a world of illusion, delusion, celebrity and hunger.
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‘Compelling. Barker's narrative draws us in with the disturbing, surreal touch of a latter-day Lewis Carroll.' Sunday Times
'Dazzling... She celebrates the complexity of human experience.'’The Times
'Insanely inventive. Her vision of a marginal Britain populated by drifters and desperados is fired by a comic energy that dances on the edge of self-combustion.' Guardian
'Barker's eccentrics are the stuff of pure farce. And they allow her to reinvent, joyously, the cogs, gears and mechanics of the genre. She knows, as Wodehouse also knew, how to rev up the language, do baroque variations on a phrase, even break into a kind of poetry.’ New York Times
Nicola Barker was born in Ely in 1966 and spent part of her childhood in South Africa. She 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 (1993). Her first novel Reversed Forecast was published in 1994 and a short novel Small Holdings followed in 1995. A second collection of short stories Heading Inland, for which Nicola received an Arts Council Writers’ Award, and received the 1997 John Llewellyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize. Her story ‘Symbiosis’ was filmed and broadcast on BBC2; another story, ‘Dual Balls’, was commissioned for broadcast on Channel 4 and shortlisted for a BAFTA Award. Her third novel Wide Open was published in 1998, and won the English-speaking world’s biggest literary award for a single work, the IMPAC Prize. In 2000 she published another short novel, Five Miles from Outer Hope. Her fifth novel, Behindlings, was published in 2002 and the following novel, Clear, was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004. Darkmans, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2007, the 2008 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Award and won the Hawthornden Prize for 2008. Most recently, Barker's work THE YIPS has been longlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2012. She was named as one of the 20 Best Young British Novelists by Granta in 2005. Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
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Book Description Hardback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001939974
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Book Description 22 cm, 346 Seiten, hellgrauer Pappband, geprägter Rückentitel, Original-Schutzumschlag. wenig gebraucht, sehr gut erhalten. Sprache: Englisch. Seller Inventory # 36570AB
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 1st Edition. First British edition, first printing in hardcover with dust jacket. There is a quarter sized scuff in shiny acetate on the front cover of the dust jacket otherwise Fine/Fine. Seller Inventory # 257498
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. Tight copy. Seller Inventory # 9466
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First Edition. cloth, dust jacket, 346 pages, fine edition, first printing, d.j is NOT price-clipped, Set during the 44 days in Fall 2003 that the American illusionist David Blaine spent without food suspended over the Thames in a clear plastic box. The narrator is a young man called Adair MacKenny, who works in the London Assembly building and consequently finds his path to and from work impeded by Blaine lovers and haters. Even those who never make the journey down to Tower Bridge appear to be touched in some way. A bizarre novel from a brilliant, young UK novelist. Size: 8 Vo,.(22 cm). Seller Inventory # 1124067