I Am Sovereign

US: William Heinemann, 2019. Hardback. Very Good/Very Good. 'An anarchic and lovingly perverse writer.' Ali Smith 'I think Nicola Barker is incapable of a dull page. [Her work] is unified b y its spirit of adventure.' Kevin Barry 'She really is a genius.' Guardian Charles, a forty-year-old boutique teddy bear maker and wearer of ironic t- shirts, is trying - and failing - to sell his small, characterless house in Llandudno. Avigail, yes Avigail, his estate agent, is trying - mostly in v ain - to rein in Charles's most unhelpful eccentricities, including his rep eated recounting to potential buyers of an unsuccessful burglary that took place twelve years ago. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. When Wang Shu and her daughter view the house, a series of seemingly innocu ous events distorts the reality of the characters' lives, causing Avigail t o revaluate her beliefs - and all of the characters to question their very existence. As religious epiphanies bump up against declarations of love, examinations of subjectivity hurtle into meditations on the history of culture, our enti re understanding of the book - and of the boundaries between fiction and re al life - is radically upended. A tour de force in miniature form that twists the novel into new shapes as the characters sabotage the fictional world they inhabit, I Am Sovereign sees Nicola Barker at her most joyful, provocative and riotous.