Regeneration

Regeneration is Pat Barker's classic, Booker-nominated novel of World War I and trauma. Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers' job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. Pat Barker's Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men. "A brilliant novel. Intense and subtle". (Peter Kemp, Sunday Times). "A vivid evocation of the agony of the First World War and a multi-layered exploration of all wars. A fine anthem for doomed youth". (Time Out). "A novel of tremendous power". (Margaret Forster). "Unforgettable". (Sunday Telegraph). "One of the strongest and most interesting novelists of her generation". (Guardian). Pat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been filmed, The Eye in the Door, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize. The trilogy featured the Observer's 2012 list of the ten best historical novels. She is also the author of the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class, and Toby's Room. She lives in Durham.