The Cauliflower by Nicola Barker – review

Barker’s fictionalised biography of Indian mystic Sri Ramakrishna is typically audacious but a little hit and miss

When, in 1965, Christopher Isherwood published his biography of the mid-19th century Indian mystic Sri Ramakrishna (Ramakrishna and His Disciples), it was to general head-scratching. “It is still a bit difficult to regard Herr Issyvoo as a guru fancier,” one critic sniffed, a response that Isherwood recorded resignedly in his own memoir of spiritual questing, My Guru and His Disciple (1980). Nicola Barker’s interest in Ramakrishna, whose life forms the meat of The Cauliflower, is less of a surprise.

Ramakrishna’s own Skimpole-like unworldliness is the source of a perpetual headache for his devoted nephew Hriday

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