Pat Barker is celebrated for her incisive novels that delve into the psychological and moral complexities of her characters. Her work consistently explores the profound impact of conflict and societal upheaval on the human psyche, revealing the resilience of the spirit amidst devastation. Barker masterfully blends historical realism with deep introspection, crafting narratives that are both intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant.
Including all three novels in one volume, "Regeneration", "The Eye in the Door" and "The Ghost Road". The trilogy explores with gritty realism the whole dirty, glorious and horrifying business of war.
An alternate cover edition can be found here.As World War I winds to a close, two men--Dr. William Rivers, a psychologist whose dedicated healing sends men back to the brutal front, and Billy Prior, a shell-shocked soldier determined to rejoin the final English offensive--are profounded affected by the events of the era. Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize.
An alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here. Vivid, bawdy and bitter' (The Times), Pat Barker's first novel shows the women of Union Street, young and old, meeting the harsh challeges of poverty and survival in a precarious world. There's Kelly, at eleven, neglected and independent, dealing with a squalid rape; Dinah, knocking on sixty and still on the game; Joanne, not yet twenty, not yet married, and already pregnant; Old Alice, welcoming her impending death; Muriel helplessly watching the decline of her stoical husband. And linking them all, watching over them all, mother to half the street, is fiery, indomitable Iris.
Pat Barker's acclaimed antiwar novel returns to the World War I era in a gripping narrative set in the spring of 1918. As a massive German offensive looms over the English army, the government and a panicked public seek scapegoats, targeting pacifists and homosexuals. Many face persecution, with some jailed and others living in fear. The phrase "the eye in the door" symbolizes the paranoia threatening British society. Central to the story is Lieutenant Billy Prior, recently released from treatment for shell shock by psychiatrist Dr. William Rivers. Assigned to a domestic Intelligence unit in London, he must investigate a female pacifist accused of plotting an assassination—a woman who raised him and now accuses him of betrayal. Complicating matters, Prior has had a passionate encounter with Charles Manning, an upper-class officer whose social standing offers him some protection against the dangers of being exposed as a homosexual. Billy Prior embodies the conflict of a working-class man elevated to officer status, a soldier haunted by war yet loyal to his comrades, and a bisexual struggling with his identity. As he navigates these challenges, the author crafts a vivid portrayal of a society grappling with the horrors of war and the search for honor and truth amid personal turmoil.
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY 'Chilling, powerful, audacious' The Times 'Magnificent. You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening Standard There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan War whose voice has been silent - until now. Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness that history forgot . . . Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is a slave to the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story? THE PERFECT GIFT FOR FANS OF MADELINE MILLER'S CIRCE AND THE SONG OF ACHILLES! *Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Costa Novel Award* Pat Barker continues her extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest myths in The Women of Troy.
Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, where 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�s 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 � Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men. The first book in the Regeneration trilogy
The follow-up to Pat Barker's Number One bestseller THE WOMEN OF TROYContinuing the story of the captured Trojan women as they set sail for Mycenae with the victorious Greeks, this new novel centres on the fate of Cassandra -- daughter of King Priam, priestess of Apollo, and a prophet condemned never to be heeded. (When she refuses to have sex with Apollo, after he has kissed her, granting her the gift of true prophecy, he spits in her mouth to make sure she will never be believed.)Psychologically complex and dangerously driven, Cassandra's arrival in Mycenae will set in motion a bloody train of events, drawing in King Agamemnon, his wife Clytemnestra and daughter Electra. Agamemnon's triumphant return from Troy is far from the celebration he imagined, and the fate of the Trojan women as uncertain as they had feared.
Liza Garrett is the first child in town born in the twentieth century--whose life in many ways mirrors the turmoils of England itself. The tough, severe, but very real and recognizable world of women is put to the most strenuous tests, and Liza, at eighty-four, is proof that loyalty, fortitude and humor survive.
Paul Tarrant, Elinor Brooke and Kit Neville first met in 1914 at the Slade School of Art, before their generation lost hope, faith and much else besides on the battlefields of Ypres and the Somme. Now it is 1940, they are middle-aged, and another war has begun. London is a haunted city. Some have even turned to seances in an attempt to contact lost loved ones. As the bombs fall and Elinor and the others struggle to survive, old temptations and obsessions return, and all of them are forced to make choices about what they really want ...
Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors - all they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind has vanished, the seas becalmed by vengeful gods, and so the warriors remain in limbo - camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, kept company by the women they stole from it. The women of Troy. Helen - poor Helen. All that beauty, all that grace - and she was just a mouldy old bone for feral dogs to fight over. Cassandra, who has learned not to be too attached to her own prophecies. They have only ever been believed when she can get a man to deliver them. Stubborn Amina, with her gaze still fixed on the ruined towers of Troy, determined to avenge the slaughter of her king. Hecuba, howling and clawing her cheeks on the silent shore, as if she could make her cries heard in the gloomy halls of Hades. As if she could wake the dead. And Briseis, carrying her future in her womb: the unborn child of the dead hero Achilles. Once again caught up in the disputes of violent men. Once again faced with the chance to shape history. Masterful and enduringly resonant, ambitious and intimate, The Women of Troy continues Pat Barker's extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest classical myths, following on from the critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls.