Nicola Barker makes Ondaatje shortlistGuy Dammann writing in the Guardian Tuesday March 25, 2008
Nicola Barker: in the running with Darkmans
Nicola Barker, Orlando Figes and Graham Robb are among the authors shortlisted for the 2008 Ondaatje prize. The £10,000 award is given annually by the Royal Society of Literature to a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which is "of the highest literary merit", and judged to convey a sense of place. 
Nicola Barker's inclusion will provide compensation for having been left off the shortlist for this year's Orange prize. Her 838-page epic novel Darkmans tells the story of Edward IV's court jester through the lens of a contemporary Ashford, Kent peopled with improbable, idiosyncratic characters.
Previous winners of the Ondaatje prize include Hisham Matar, James Meek and Rory Stuart.
The winner will be announced on April 28.
The full shortlist:
Darkmans by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)
Paradise with Serpents by Robert Carver (Harper Perennial)
The Whisperers by Orlando Figes (Allen Lane)
On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein (Hamish Hamilton)
Sea Holly by Robert Minhinnick (Seren)
The Discovery of France by Graham Robb (Picador)
Footnote:
Darkmans was shortlisted for the 2007 Man Booker Prize.
1 comment:
Has anyone out there read Darkmans? I've been eyeing it up at the bookshop since the Bookers -- shifting it around a bit -- flicking it open and shut...It's a massive tome and beguiling and scary all at once. I read an amazing review just now in the Guardian online and here is how it ends:
"Darkmans is just the sort of bravura performance that will probably inspire vitriol in a certain breed of reviewer as too ostentatious, too brazen. Pity them, reader, for being unable to embrace such a loud shout of glorious, untidy, angry, joyous life. Barker is a great, restless novelist, and Darkmans is a great, restless novel. At the end of 838 blinding, high-octane pages, I was bereft that there weren't 838 more."
So, readers anyone?
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