Travelling Sprinkler (Folio Prize Nominee)

Paul Chowder is a poet, but he's fallen out of love with writing poems. He hasn't fallen out of love with his ex-girlfriend Roz, though. In fact he misses her desperately.

As he struggles to come to terms with Roz's new relationship with a doctor, Paul turns to his acoustic guitar for comfort and inspiration, and fills his days writing protest songs, going to Quaker meetings, struggling through Planet Fitness workouts, wondering if he could become a techno DJ, and experimenting with cigar smoking.

Written in Baker's beautifully unconventional prose, and scored with musical influences from Debussy to Tracy Chapman to Paul himself, Travelling Sprinkler is an enchanting, hilarious novel from an offbeat American genius.

Goofy and elegaic, intricately patterned and moving (New Yorker)

The book is a delight: funny, tender and endearingly bonkers. A lesser writer dealing with a hapless, guitar-plucking, cigar-puffing poet on the slide in his fifties would be tempted to shovel trouble at him for comic or emotional effect. Baker does the opposite, imbuing Chowder not only with a feverish intellectual curiosity but with a generosity of spirit...Baker has a strange and interesting mind, and a life-enhancing wit to go with it. Travelling Sprinkler sees him at the top of his form. (Terence Blacker Independent)

He once again shows he's a master of gentle, obsessively detailed comedy. Terrific. (Harry Ritchie Daily Mail)

Melancholic and sweet (William Leith Evening Standard)

Genial, softly upbeat, written as flowingly as if he were telling a friend about his day (Mail on Sunday)

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