Spurting with kinetic energy, nasty wit, and kindness to animals, Wesley ought to be a star. Or so it seems to the "Behindlings" -- followers who nip at his heels, turn up everywhere he goes, and lie in wait for him around every corner. They skulk through the dreary streets of their tiny English town, gathering their own scabby intentions, irritating habits, and weird manners, burying all differences in the common pursuit of their true prize, their Wesley. In Behindlings, the inimitable and ungovernable Nicola Barker takes her most compelling character to date, gives him his head and her novel, and sees him run off with her readers.

Featuring a broad range of contemporary British novelists from Iain Banks to Jeanette Winterson, Louis de Bernieres to Irvine Welsh and Salman Rushdie, this book offers an excellent introductory guide to the contemporary literary scene. Each entry includes concise biographical information on each of the key novelists and analysis of their major works and themes. Fully cross-referenced and containing extensive guides to further reading, Fifty Contemporary British Novelists is the ideal guide to modern British fiction for both the student and the contemporary fiction buff alike.

From the author of The Yips and Burley Cross Postbox Theft comes an epic novel of startling originality.

Presents an alphabetical reference guide detailing the lives and works of authors associated with the English-language fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

On September 5, 2003, illusionist David Blaine entered a small Perspex box adjacent to London's Thames River and began starving himself. Forty-four days later, on October 19, he left the box, fifty pounds lighter. That much, at least, is clear. And the rest? The crowds? The chaos? The hype? The rage? The fights? 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.

'Wide Open' is about stripping off layers of prejudice and lies, about the possibility of redemption, about laying bare the truth. It is also about coming to terms with the past, and the fantasies people construct to protect their inner selves.

Nicola Barker's exuberant novels here receive the scholarly attention they deserve in a collection of essays which moves chronologically through her oeuvre. The chapters are broad-ranging, placing Barker's work in its contemporary context and collectively making a convincing case for her importance as one of our most inventive novelists. Contents Foreword Nicola Barker The Barkeresque Mode: An Introduction Berthold Schoene Indie Style: Reversed Forecast and a Turn-of-the-Century Aesthetic Ben Masters 'Temporary People': Wide Open as an Island Narrative Daniel Marc Janes 'You grew up in this shithole, then?': Literary Geographics and the Thames Gateway Series Len Platt 'The Pair of Opposites Paradox': Ambivalence, Destabilization and Resistance in Five Miles from Outer Hope Ginette Carpenter 'Woah there a moment. Time out!': Slowing Down in Clear: A Transparent Novel Beccy Kennedy Beneath the Thin Veneer of the Modern: Medievalism in Darkmans Christopher Vardy Burley Cross Postbox Theft as Comedy Huw Marsh 'Tuning into My "Awareness Continuum"': Optimized Attention in The Yips Alice Bennett Exuberant Narration as Metaphysical Currency in In the Approaches Berthold Schoene The Pursuit of Happiness in H(A)PPY, or What a Difference an (A) Makes Eleanor Byrne Notes on Contributors Index