Pat Barker writes literary and historical fiction about war, trauma, class and the ways violence continues inside ordinary domestic life. Regeneration begins her First World War trilogy at Craiglockhart War Hospital, where army psychiatrist W.H.R. Rivers treats officers including the poet Siegfried Sassoon after Sassoon publicly rejects the continuation of the war. The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road extend the story through questions of shell shock, sexuality, military duty and return to combat. The Silence of the Girls retells the Iliad largely through Briseis, a captured woman awarded to Achilles, shifting attention from heroic combat to enslavement and the women around the Greek camp. Barker's prose is spare, direct and psychologically focused. Barker's fiction sits across First World War fiction, feminist myth retelling and historical literary fiction. Regeneration opens Barker's First World War trilogy, while The Silence of the Girls stands separately as a classical retelling that moves attention from battlefield heroes to enslaved women. Read more Less
No products in the cart.