Barker beats novels by Will Self and Jon McGregor to take home the £10,000 literary prize for her narrative-bending vision of a dystopian futureNicola Barker’s H(a)ppy has won this year’s Goldsmiths prize for “fiction at its most novel”, praised by judges as a work of “vaulting ambition”. they simply adjust the chemicals.” She ponders why, writing of how “h(a)ppy” this makes her, “the A persist[s] on disambiguating? Describing the story as “an ingenious closed loop of mass surveillance, technology and personality-modifying psychopharmaceuticals,” Wood added: “H(a)ppy is a fabulous demonstration of what the Goldsmiths prize champions: innovation of form that only ever enriches the story. The Goldsmiths prize rewards British and Irish fiction “that breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel” and was launched in 2013 with the New Statesman. Barry said that Barker’s novel was “a work of vaulting ambition … deathly serious but played out with the lightest of touches”.

Source: The Guardian November 15, 2017 19:52 UTC