Most Popular Books by Pat Barker

The basis for the major motion picture The Drowning from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy and The Silence of the Girls. Out walking with his wife, Lauren, beside the River Tyne, Tom Seymour instinctively risks his life to save a young man who they happen to notice just before he jumps into the icy current. Tom''s spontaneous act saves the life of someone whose past, as well as his future, he feels a sense of responsibility towards. Recently released from prison, and living under an assumed name, Danny Miller was tried for murder as a ten-year-old on the basis of Tom''s testimony, and assessment of him as a psychologist and an expert witness. When Danny asks Tom to help him sort out his life—beginning with his past—Tom is drawn into a lonely, soul-searching reinvestigation of the child murderer''s case. "Exhilarating moral exploration, and prose as naked and jolting as an unwrapped live wire." —Richard Eder, The New York Times Book Review "It''s her canny feel for the psyche''s ambiguous meanderings, more than plot twists, that generates most of the thrills . . . This author creates an atmosphere of menace worthy of a Joyce Carol Oates." —Dan Cryer, Newsday "Barker soars to new heights with this harrowing, contemporary study of fate tainted by the stench of evil." —Robert Allen Papinchak, USA Today "Barker creates a sense of menace worthy of Ian McEwan . . . Border Crossing is replete with sharp, expressive exchanges, hard poetry, and as many enigmas as implacable truths." —Kerry Field, The Atlantic Monthly

The second installment in the Regeneration Trilogy It is the spring of 1918, and Britain is faced with the possibility of defeat by Germany. A beleaguered government and a vengeful public target two groups as scapegoats: pacifists and homosexuals. Many are jailed, others lead dangerous double lives, the "the eye in the door" becomes a symbol of the paranoia that threatens to destroy the very fabric of British society. Central to this novel are such compelling, richly imagined characters as the brilliant and compassionate Dr. William Rivers; his most famous patient, the poet Siegfried Sassoon; and Lieutenant Billy Prior, who plays a central role as a domestic intelligence agent. With compelling, realistic dialogue and a keen eye for the social issues that have gone overlooked in mainstream media, The Eye in the Door is a triumph that equals Regeneration and the third novel in the trilogy, the 1995 Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road, establishing Pat Barker''s place in the very forefront of contemporary novelists.

The Booker Prize-winning modern classic of contemporary war fiction from the Women''s Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls Recommended by Richard Osman ''One of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction'' Jonathan Coe ''Original, delicate and unforgettable'' Independent ''A new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male and female, soldiers and civilians. Constantly surprising and formally superb'' A. S. Byatt, Daily Telegraph 1917, Scotland. At Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, army psychiatrist William Rivers treats shell-shocked soldiers before sending them back to the front. In his care are poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. . . Regeneration, The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road follow the stories of these men until the last months of the war. Widely acclaimed and admired, Pat Barker''s Regeneration trilogy paints with moving detail the far-reaching consequences of a conflict which decimated a generation. The Regeneration trilogy: Regeneration The Eye in the Door The Ghost Road

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? PERFECT 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.

"Union Street: Concerns seven neighboring women near a factory in northeast England. Life for these women is trying: some of them are married to alcoholics, some are victims of abuse; one is old and near death, another is still a child but has the experience of an adult; all are struggling to survive."--Provided by publisher.

"Troy has fallen and the victorious Greeks are eager to return home with the spoils of an endless war--including the women of Troy themselves. They await a fair wind for the Aegean; it does not come, because the gods are offended. The body of King Priam lies unburied and desecrated, and so the victors remain in suspension, camped in the shadows of the city they destroyed as the coalition that held them together begins to unravel. Old feuds resurface and new suspicions and rivalries begin to fester. Largely unnoticed by her captors, the one time Trojan queen Briseis, formerly Achilles''s slave, now belonging to his companion Alcimus, quietly takes in these developments. She forges alliances when she can, with Priam''s aged wife, the defiant Hecuba, and with the disgraced soothsayer Calchas, all the while shrewdly seeking her path to revenge

Double Vision from Pat Barker, a gripping novel about the effects of violence on the journalists and artists who have dedicated themselves to representing it In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, reeling from the effects of reporting from New York City, two British journalists, a writer, Stephen Sharkey, and a photographer, Ben Frobisher, part ways. Stephen, facing the almost simultaneous discovery that his wife is having an affair, returns to England shattered; he divorces and quits his job. Ben returns to his vocation. He follows the war on terror to Afghanistan and is killed. Stephen retreats to a cottage in the country to write a book about violence, and what he sees as the reporting journalist''s or photographer''s complicity in it; it is a book that will build in large part on Ben''s writing and photography. Ben''s widow, Kate, a sculptor, lives nearby, and as she and Stephen learn about each other their world speedily shrinks, in pleasing but also disturbing ways; Stephen''s maid, with whom he has begun an affair, was once lovers with Kate''s new studio assistant, an odd local man named Peter. As these connections become clear, Peter''s strange behavior around Stephen and Kate begins to take on threatening implications. The sinister events that take place in this small town, so far from the theaters of war Stephen has retreated from, will force him to act instinctively, violently, and to face his most painful revelations about himself.

Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize Set in the closing months of World War I, this towering novel combines poetic intensity with gritty realism as it brings Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy to its stunning conclusion. In France, millions of men engaged in brutal trench warfare are all “ghosts in the making.” In England, psychologist William Rivers, with severe pangs of conscience, treats the mental casualties of the war to make them whole enough to fight again. One of these, Billy Prior, risen to the officer class from the working class, both courageous and sardonic, decides to return to France with his fellow officer, poet Wilfred Owen, to fight a war he no longer believes in. Meanwhile, Rivers, enfevered by influenza returns in memory to his experience studying a South Pacific tribe whose ethos amounted to a culture of death. Across the gulf between his society and theirs, Rivers begins to form connections that cast new light on his—and our—understanding of war.

Twelve-year-old Colin Harper weaves together movies and real life in an attempt to create an understanding of what his father was like and what it means to be a man.

In the spring of 1914, a group of students at the Slade School of Art have gathered for a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant is easily distracted by an intriguing fellow student, Elinor Brooke, but watches from afar when a well-known painter catches her eye. After World War I begins, Paul tends to the dying soldiers from the front line as a Belgian Red Cross volunteer, but the longer he remains, the greater the distance between him and home becomes. By the time he returns, Paul must confront not only the overwhelming, perhaps impossible challenge of how to express all that he has seen and experienced, but also the fact that life, and love, will never be the same for him again.

From Booker Prize winner Pat Barker, a masterful novel that portrays the staggering human cost of the Great War. Admirers of her Regeneration Trilogy as well as fans of Downton Abbey and War Horse will be enthralled. With Toby’s Room, a sequel to her widely praised previous novel Life Class, the incomparable Pat Barker confirms her place in the pantheon of Britain’s finest novelists. This indelible portrait of a family torn apart by war focuses on Toby Brooke, a medical student, and his younger sister Elinor. Enmeshed in a web of complicated family relationships, Elinor and Toby are close: some might say too close. But when World War I begins, Toby is posted to the front as a medical officer while Elinor stays in London to continue her fine art studies at the Slade, under the tutelage of Professor Henry Tonks. There, in a startling development based in actual fact, Elinor finds that her drafting skills are deployed to aid in the literal reconstruction of those maimed in combat. One day in 1917, Elinor has a sudden premonition that Toby will not return from France. Three weeks later the family receives a telegram informing them that Toby is “Missing, Believed Killed” in Ypres. However, there is no body, and Elinor refuses to accept the official explanation. Then she finds a letter hidden in the lining of Toby’s uniform; Toby knew he wasn’t coming back, and he implies that fellow soldier Kit Neville will know why. Toby’s Room is an eloquent literary narrative of hardship and resilience, love and betrayal, and anguish and redemption. In unflinching yet elegant prose, Pat Barker captures the enormity of the war’s impact—not only on soldiers at the front but on the loved ones they leave behind.

From a Booker Award–winning author, "a powerful and moving and deeply humane study of the tyranny of the past and the quandaries of the present"(Barry Unsworth, The New York Times Book Review). Plagued by nightmarish memories of the trenches where he saw his brother die, Nick''s grandfather Gordie lays dying as Nick struggles to keep the peace in his increasingly fractious home. As Nick''s suburban family loses control over their world, Nick begins to learn his grandfather''s buried secrets and comes to understand the power of old wounds to leak into the present. As a study of the power of memory and loss, Pat Barker''s Another World conveys with extraordinary intensity the ways in which the violent past returns to haunt and distort the present. "Barker''s confidence as a stripped-down, elegant stylist is evenly matched by her moral depth." — The Boston Sunday Globe "[Pat Barker] is the natural successor to George Orwell, like him a keen and passionate defender of humiliated children, foot soldiers and what''s become of the British working class." — Newsday "Of such imaginative complexity and generosity that first-rate fiction is made." — Kirkus Reviews "Haunting. . . . [A] suspenseful read, but the books real power lies in [Barker''s] vividly drawn characters." — Library Journal "A narrative with all the richness and complexity of a symphony." — The New Criterion

A new novel from the Booker Prize winning Pat Barker, author of the Regeneration Trilogy, that unforgettably portrays London during the Blitz (her first portrayal of World War II) and reconfirms her place in the very top rank of British novelists. London, the Blitz, Autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on the blacked-out city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races from bomb sites to hospitals trying to save the lives of injured survivors, working alongside former friend Kit Neville, while her husband Paul Tarrant works as an air-raide warden. Once fellow students at the Slade School of Fine Art before the First World War destroyed the hopes of their generation, they now find themselves caught in another war, this time at home. As the bombing intensifies, the constant risk of death makes all three reach out for quick consolation. And into their midst comes the spirit medium Bertha Mason, grotesque and unforgettable, whose ability to make contact with the deceased finds vastly increased demands as death rains down from the skies. Old loves and obsessions resurface until Elinor is brought face to face with an almost impossible choice. Completing the story of Elinor Brooke, Paul Tarrant and Kit Neville begun with Life Class and continued with Toby''s Room, Noonday is both a stand-alone novel and the climax of a trilogy. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life in her most powerful novel since the Regeneration trilogy.

One of the Amazon Editors'' 10 Best Books of December • One of Kirkus Reviews'' Best Fiction Books of the Year • One of the Financial Times'' Best Fiction Books of the Year • One of The Times'' Best Novels of the Year AN INSTANT UK BESTSELLER “Barker’s vision of a world shaped by violence, a key theme in all her fiction, is equal to the tragic grandeur of ancient myth....More brilliant work from one of world literature’s greatest writers.” —Kirkus Reviews *starred review* From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Regeneration Trilogy comes the powerful third installment to the Women of Troy series. In The Voyage Home, Pat Barker skillfully reimagines Greek mythology, chronicling a perilous journey undertaken by the enslaved healer Ritsa and her cruel mistress Cassandra. I never saw Cassandra as a victim. I saw a woman as focused on a single aim as any raptor stooping to its prey; but then, I had more opportunities to observe her ruthlessness than most. I was in her power, you see. I was her slave. Pat Barker has crafted the latest in a brilliant reimagining of Greek mythology, and The Voyage Home is the work of a writer at the height of her powers. In this third outing, she follows the young Ritsa and the unpredictable Cassandra on their perilous return journey to Mycenae. Cassandra has acquired the powers of prophecy from the kiss of Apollo, but the very same god has taken away the people’s belief in her abilities. Though she warns of the carnage that awaits the Greek warrior king Agamemnon—who numbs himself with alcohol on the storm-plagued trip home—her shipmates disregard her. While Cassandra’s prophecies fall on deaf ears, Ritsa instead remains focused on surviving once they make land. When a mysterious young girl begins to shadow them, and Agamemnon’s cruelty takes a new turn, Ritsa must find a safe place for Cassandra, whose mood alternates between cruelty and frenzy. But it’s the ongoing ire between Queen Clytemnestra and Agamemnon that could prove fatal for everyone. In The Voyage Home, Barker elevates myth and legend and asks us to examine the stories we hold dear through a feminist lens, and in doing so she has crafted a tale that upholds her legacy as one of our finest contemporary novelists.