Nikki Gemmell has written four novels, Shiver, Cleave, Lovesong and The Bride Stripped Bare, and one non-fiction book, Pleasure: An Almanac for the Heart. Her work has been internationally critically acclaimed and translated into many languages.

In France she's been described as a female Jack Kerouac, in Australia as one of the most original and engaging authors of her generation and in the US as one of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time.

The French literary review "Lire" has included her in a list of what it calls the fifty most important writers in the world - the ones it believes will have a significant influence on the literature of the 21st century. The criteria for selection included a very individual voice and unmistakeable style, as well as an original choice of subject. Nikki Gemmell was selected along with such novelists as Rick Moody, Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Froer, Rohinton Mistry, Tim Winton, Colum McCann, Michel Faber and Hari Kunzru among others.

Born in Wollongong, Australia, she now lives in London and is currently completing her fifth novel.

"Gemmell writes brilliantly" The Sunday Times (UK)

"Her mastery of an epic, Odyssean style ensures that hers is one of the few
truly original voices to emerge in a long time"  Time Out New York

"Her inimitable, urgent and demanding style makes her books impossible to
put down or forget" Madame Figaro (Paris)

"Gemmell's punchy unadorned style is wonderfully effective"‚  Publishers
Weekly (US)

"Gemmell's grasp of character is astute, and her themes expansive"  Times
Literary Supplement (UK)

"Nikki Gemmell lobs emotional depth charges" The Australian

"Edgy prose ... an almost mythical dimension" Le Monde (France)

"Cleave is like a female version of Kerouac‚s On the Road" Cosmopolitan
(France)

"A narrative style (that is) compelling and exotic" Baltimore Sun (US)

"(Cleave) leaks deep into the imagination...haunts one long after the book
ends" The Times (London)

"Gemmell knows how to tell a good story"  The Age (Australia)

"Startingly beautiful" The Daily Telegraph

"Passionate, sensuous, energetic prose...highly engaging, compulsively
readable" The Adelaide Advertiser

"Lovesong...casts a siren-like spell. A lovely, lyrical creation that has
melody and melancholy aching through its sentences...bewitchingly good"
Elle UK, Book of the Month

"...an arrestingly strange love story...a mesmerising read about the triumph
of the human spirit...it‚s punchy but poetic and above all, heartbreaking"
Glamour UK, Must-read of the Month

"...this strange and lovely novel is presented as a crime story...the plot,
carefully wrought, surprising but utterly convincing, rushes (the
protaganists) across the world and back, through layers of innocence, love,
guilt and sacrifice" The Times (UK)

"Gemmell evokes place superbly...while Lillie, clever, confused and
vulnerable, is real and touchning" The Sunday Times (UK)

"I found myself caught up by the intensity of the novel, so that the act of
reading was more like a strange sort of haunting than just following a
narrative. It‚s remarkable that the way (Gemmell) writes is so very
different from the realistic social novel practised in either Australia or
Britain. The actual writing - the language, the sentence organisation, the
visionary emphasis - is brilliant and possessed of a poetic nimbus" Peter Porter

"A striking and memorable work...There are many strengths, many beauties to
this book...a highly individual, original voice...Lovesong will reward a
second reading with pleasure in its vigour and love for life and language"
Australian Book Review

"compulsive and involving...Gemmell's ability to form people out of words and
make us feel their sorrows (quite painfully towards the end) marks her out as
a real talent. Anyone who has enjoyed Angela Carter but knows nothing of Nikki
Gemmell has a treat in store."
The Observer, on Lovesong

"Gemmell details her most intimate perceptions with care and originality, carving
intricately the vivid moments of her life...a bold and admirable novel in which
every sentence counts."
The Times, on Lovesong