The Cauliflower
Nicola Barker

Nicola Barker usually picks her casts of huge, bizarre characters from odd corners of contemporary ­southern England. In her new novel she travels to Bengal during the back end of the nineteenth century, in pursuit of a legendary “one”: a guru, saint, madman and irritating relative with exceptionally long arms. The story revolves around the imagined life and times of a real guru known as Sri Ramakrishna (let’s call him SRK), founder of a still popular cult. Born a Brahmin, SRK begins his sadhana or spiritual journey by getting lost during his birth. He continues to annoy (and delight) those around him by becoming, progressively, a baby too heavy for his mother to lift, an ape, an apostate, an anorexic, a woman, a tantric expert and an incarnation of God.

Settling down (after a fashion) in an elaborate temple six miles north of Calcutta on the banks of the Hooghly River (a tributary of the holy Ganga), SRK needs managing. To echo Barker quoting Dickens on the appalling Skimpole from Bleak House – “in simplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless inaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child.