Anatomy of a Soldier

Review A great novel: a defining work . . . It will be read with wonder, with respect and with gratitude. ― New Statesman Surprising and daring . . . Inanimate objects tell the story of a soldier's catastrophic tour of Afghanistan and its aftermath. It sounds odd but it's entirely engaging, thought provoking and moving. -- Val McDermid ― Guardian 'Books of the Year' It is a novel of concentrated ferocity and chilling accomplishments, tense and unflinching but alive to every nuance of feeling. -- Hilary Mantel Impressive, starkly different . . . a poignant and humbling piece of writing. -- Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club Viscerally authentic . . . compelling and ultimately moving. ― Sunday Times Ambitious ... [takes] its readers far beyond the limits of the conventional war memoir. ― Sunday Herald There isn't a single perspective in Anatomy of a Soldier that doesn't have a ring of truth. ― Evening Standard It's marvellously told and this way of telling it ... giving the inanimate a voice ... is both engrossing and distancing and I know of nothing quite like it. -- Alan Bennett This is a brilliant book, direct from the battle zone, where all the paraphernalia of slaughter is deployed to tell its particular and savage story. -- Edna O'Brien We've become desensitized to war stories, but Harry Parker - not simply through the originality of his approach but also through skillful storytelling, intimate observation, and an endless ability to surprise and move the reader - cuts past our calluses and delivers a bold new narrative of war and its aftermath. -- Phil Klay, author of Redeployment A tour de force. In this brilliant and beguiling novel Harry Parker sees the hidden forces that act on the bodies and souls of combatants and non-combatants. These pages are dangerous but they contain compassion and sorrow too. There is wonder here at what men have done to themselves. It feels like war through the looking glass but it is utterly real. -- Nadeem Aslam Highly original. This is a compassionate and compelling book where the artefacts and detritus of war tell their own emotive stories. The language has a clarity about it that elevates it to the beautiful. -- Kate Hamer, author of The Girl in the Red Coat A riveting, evocative, brutally realistic read. Anatomy of a Soldier is a novel, but one clearly based on the author's searing experiences in combat and during recovery. It provides a vivid description of life as a soldier in Afghanistan and of life after being seriously wounded. What Harry Parker has written will enthrall, enlighten, and stay with readers. -- General (Ret) David Petraeus, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, 2010-11 Another narrative carried by different voices was the surprising and daring Anatomy of a Soldier by Harry Parker, where inanimate objects tell the story of a soldier's catastrophic tour of Afghanistan and its aftermath. It sounds odd but it's entirely engaging, thought provoking and moving.' -- Val McDermid ― Guardian Books of the Year Product Description Winner of the Waverton Good Read Award 2017 Shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2017 Shortlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2017 Imagine if your whole life changed in the blink of an eye . . . Captain Tom Barnes is leading British troops into a war zone when he is gravely injured by an exploding IED. This devastating moment and the transformative months that follow are narrated here by forty-five objects, telling one unforgettable story. From the Author Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire. He was educated at Falmouth College of Art and University College London. He joined the British Army when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009 as a Captain. He is now a writer and artist and lives in London. From the Inside Flap Captain Tom Barnes is leading British troops in a war zone. Two boys are growing up there, sharing a prized bic