Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2016
304 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Information
From Man Booker-shortlisted, IMPAC Award-winning author Nicola Barker, comes an exuberant, multi-voiced new novel mapping the extraordinary life and legacy of a 19th-century Hindu saint.
To the world, he is Sri Ramakrishna - godly avatar, esteemed spiritual master, beloved guru. To Rani Rashmoni, she of low caste and large inheritance, he is the brahmin fated to defy tradition. But to Hriday, his nephew and longtime caretaker, he is just Uncle - maddening, bewildering Uncle, prone to entering trances at the most inconvenient of times, known to sneak out to the forest at midnight to perform dangerous acts of self-effacement, who must be vigilantly safeguarded not only against jealous enemies and devotees with ulterior motives, but also against that most treasured yet insidious of sulfur-rich vegetables: the cauliflower.
Rather than puzzling the shards of history and legend together, Barker shatters the mirror again and rearranges the pieces. The result is a biographical novel viewed through a kaleidoscope. Dazzlingly inventive and brilliantly comic, irreverent and mischievous, The Cauliflower delivers us into the divine playfulness of a twenty-first-century literary master.
"Irreverent ... Beneath the jaunty surface, the novel explores important questions about the nature of religious experience." - Publishers Weekly
"Respectful, playful, and often entertaining - though just as often puzzling. Barker's fans will enjoy the outing, forgiving her quirks." - Kirkus
"It may help to have an interest in Indian mysticism and the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to appreciate fully Barker's imaginative novel, but the guru's message of love, tolerance, peace, and kindness should resonate with most readers in these somewhat dark days." - Library Journal
"[An] imaginative tour de force … [Barker] throws a literary hand grenade into the form of the historical novel as we know it … Barker seems to want to undermine the very core of the historical novel: the idea that an act of imaginative empathy can give us access to what things were like in the past … The result is typically atypical, expectedly unexpected and inexplicably good. She really is a genius." - The Guardian (UK)
"[A] vibrant, funny, garrulous and lovely book. It is a celebration of spirituality and faith ... Perfectly balanced between clownish irreverence and hushed respect for the numinous." - The Sunday Times (UK)
"Tristram Shandy meets magical realism … This is an extremely ambitious book, playful, maddening, overlong, thought-provoking and rich. As an investigation of faith – which is what is must surely be – that's not a bad way to go." - Financial Times (UK)
"The Cauliflower brims with rich delicacies of arcana and ephemera...Throughout Barker's novel, the present is laid strangely over the past, forcing the reader to peer askance at the action from an angle, like a historical voyeur ... [Barker] has created a zany, frustrating, brilliant work." – The Daily Telegraph (UK)
"Typically audacious … These pages showcase Barker at her best: the hairpin, full-throttle flight of an audacious imagination … Intriguing, exhilarating, perplexing." – The Observer (UK)
"One of the most excitingly and exhaustively non-linear novelists around ... She opens up a mind-set usually incomprehensible to secular westerners ...This exuberantly imaginative novel about mysticism takes flight with panache." - Herald (UK)
"Nicola Barker makes her own rules…In the tale of a man who utterly rejected not just conventional society but the structure of time and space itself, she has found a wonderful reflection of her own boggling talent." - Literary Review (UK)
"Nicola Barker is both prodigiously talented and admirably fearless … a freehand, jokey sort of spiritual journey, an admiration, and a parody of faith, orchestrated by Barker with an unfailing eye for the comic opportunity … Strange, febrile and utterly unique … A story packed with vitality, wit, sly charm and astonishing energy." – The Spectator (UK)
This information about The Cauliflower was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nicola Barker is the author of more than ten novels, including The Yips (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), Darkmans (shortlisted for the Booker and the Ondaatje Prize and winner of the Hawthornden Prize), Clear (longlisted for the Booker), and Wide Open (winner of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award), and three story collections, including Love Your Enemies (winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award). Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages. She lives in London.
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