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Biography
British

Susan Barker

1978

British novelist of mixed Chinese-English heritage whose ambitious novel The Incarnations (2014) — set in present-day Beijing but spanning a thousand years of Chinese history through the conceit of reincarnation — was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and established her as one of the most interesting British novelists writing about China. Her earlier novels, Sayonara Bar and The Orientalist and the Ghost, also explore Asian settings.

Past sales0
PeriodContemporary
NationalityBritish
1. Biography

A short life of the author

Susan Barker (born 1978) is a British novelist of mixed Chinese-English heritage who grew up in England and has lived in Beijing. Her fiction draws on her dual cultural identity and her deep engagement with Asian history and contemporary life.

Major Works

Sayonara Bar (2003, Doubleday) — her debut, set in a Osaka hostess bar, exploring the collision of British and Japanese cultures.

The Incarnations (2014, Doubleday) — her most ambitious novel, narrated by a Beijing taxi driver who receives mysterious letters from a stranger claiming to have shared past lives with him across a thousand years of Chinese history — as a palace eunuch during the Ming dynasty, a goatherd during the Mongol invasion, a concubine, a rebel. The novel alternates between vividly rendered historical episodes and the driver’s increasingly destabilised present. It was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize and widely praised for its scope and imaginative daring.

Collecting Barker

The Incarnations (2014, Doubleday UK) first editions bring $20–$50. Sayonara Bar (2003, Doubleday) is a small-printing debut and more scarce. Signed copies are available through UK bookshop events.