Nicola Barker

Nicola Barker: 'If I have a life philosophy, it's ferocious innocence'

The offbeat novelist on the difficulty of writing novels about writing novels

Alex Preston

11, Jul, 2020 @5:00 PM

Tackle that to-be-read pile: the books to try if you're self-isolating

From Nora Ephron to Thomas Mann, here are 12 books to entertain, challenge and inspire if you’re confined at home due to Covid-19

Alex Clark

18, Mar, 2020 @2:30 PM

On my radar: Emma Jane Unsworth’s cultural highlights

The novelist on William Blake, crying through Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and an insightful poem about teenage masturbation

Emma Jane Unsworth

26, Jan, 2020 @10:00 AM

I Am Sovereign by Nicola Barker – in a class of her own

Nicola Barker strengthens her avant garde credentials with this smart, shifting tale of a property transaction

Alex Preston

21, Jul, 2019 @8:00 AM

I Am Sovereign by Nicola Barker review – The Author strikes back

A metatextual farce set during a house viewing in Llandudno is a timely critique of political and narrative authority

Toby Litt

19, Jul, 2019 @6:30 AM

Top 10 books about the River Thames

From bucolic source to marshy lower reaches, London’s mighty river has inspired great writing

Caroline Crampton

26, Jun, 2019 @12:40 PM

Ali Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro and Hilary Mantel top poll of best UK and Irish authors

Critics, academics and authors vote to find ‘the new Elizabethans’, to correct the tendency to champion older authors as the literary establishment

Alison Flood

05, Apr, 2018 @12:29 PM

Top 10 errant teenagers in fiction

From Infinite Jest’s antsy prodigy to Brighton Rock’s haunted antihero, debut novelist Danny Denton picks the best bad girls and boys in books

Danny Denton

31, Jan, 2018 @10:13 AM

'Where do I think best? In bed' – authors reveal their dream retreats

A hotel on the Moray Firth estuary; an adrenaline-filled auction room in west London; an ad man’s office in Manhattan on DVD … AL Kennedy, William Boyd and others celebrate their cultural hideouts

William Boyd, AL Kennedy, Nicola Barker, Joan Bakewell and Daljit Nagra

29, Dec, 2017 @12:00 PM

Nicola Barker: ‘Each novel has its own specially designed notebook. These are sacred objects to me’

The novelist on why she loves marker pens, Post-it notes and notebooks – and why she is a ‘clucky, agenda-driven mother hen’

Nicola Barker

18, Nov, 2017 @10:00 AM

Nicola Barker wins Goldsmiths prize for her novel H(a)ppy

Barker beats novels by Will Self and Jon McGregor to take home the £10,000 literary prize for her narrative-bending vision of a dystopian future