'Wide Open is word perfect, witty and ironic!..The author's focus on marginal lives and on the importance of the dispossessed and the apparently mad persuade us finally that Wide Open possesses a manic energy and taut eloquence worthy of a large, serious and global readership.' - Impac judging panel 'Razor-sharp comic sensibility and flawless structure.' - Suzi Feay, Independent on Sunday 'It combines Nicola Barker's trademark qualities of offbeat comedy and quirky characterisation with an emotional darkness and depth that marked it, for many critics, as her breakthrough !The novel mixes an eccentric island backdrop - - a Barker speciality - - with a cast of intriguing oddballs, pin-sharp comic dialogue, and a sinister undercurrent of violence and abuse.' - Independent 'The brilliance of Barker's style is beyond question! 'Wide Open' is unmistakably an important novel by an important novelist, stricken, troubling and grand. It is, I am very much afraid, too good for the Booker Prize' - The Spectator 'Wide Open establishes [Nicola Barker] as one of the most interesting writers in Britain, at once funny and moving, irreverent and profound. It proves she is like no one but herself' - Independent on Sunday 'Wide Open is so outrageously well-written that the whole damaged cast of oddballs becomes one's intimates for the duration! This is a stunningly original novel by the most unexpected talent around! Far out! Buy immediately' - Time Out

Nicola Barker was born in Ely in 1966 and spent part of her childhood in South Africa. Among her seven previous novels are 'Darkmans' (short-listed for the 2007 Booker and Ondaatje prizes, and winner of the Hawthornden) and 'Wide Open' (winner of the 2000 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award). She has also written two prize-winning collections of short-stories, 'Love Your Enemies' and 'Heading Inland', and her work has been translated into more than twenty languages. She lives in east London.