Regeneration, Pat Barker
Regeneration, Pat Barker
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Regeneration

Author: Pat Barker

Narrator: Simon Russell Beale

Unabridged: 8 hr 52 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin Audio

Published: 05/13/2025


Synopsis

 "The trilogy is trying to tell something about the parts of war that don't get into the official accounts" –Pat Barker

The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy and a Booker Prize nominee
 
In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back to the trenches. This novel tells what happened as only a novel can. It is a war saga in which not a shot is fired. It is a story of a battle for a man's mind in which only the reader can decide who is the victor, who the vanquished, and who the victim.
 
One of the most amazing feats of fiction of our time, Regneration has been hailed by critics across the globe.  As August 2014 marks the 100-year anniversary of World War I, this book is as timely and relevant as ever.

About The Author

PAT BARKER has earned a place in the first rank of contemporary British writers with such novels as Union Street, Regeneration (shortlisted for Britain's prestigious Booker Prize and chosen by the New York Times as one of the four best novels of 1992), The Eye in the Door (winner of the 1993 Guardian fiction prize), and The Ghost Road (winner of the 1995 Booker Prize). The latter three novels are available in Dutton hardcover and Plume paperback editions. Pat Barker lives in Durham, England.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Colin on September 11, 2024

Although I’ve read a biography about Siegfried Sassoon, the WWI officer, poet and voice of some reason, and one of his own semi-autobiographical novels, I didn’t know or completely missed that ‘Regeneration’ featured him and the pragmatic yet compassionate Dr Rivers who pioneered treatment for shell......more

Goodreads review by Neale on February 04, 2019

I am lost for words as to how good this novel is. To think that Barker, who was born in 1943 can write a novel which transports the reader into the horrors and the carnage of the trenches of World War 1 so effectively is amazing. Barker’s writing enabled me to see, and feel, the horrendous damage, p......more

Goodreads review by [ J o ] on October 12, 2018

I find it a bit difficult to rate this book. In terms of subject matter-mental illness brought on by the First World War-it is one of the most important in history. In terms of the way it was written, it's not the best book by any means. In terms of character, it's quite interesting but lacking. In......more


Quotes

Praise for Regeneration

“Dramatic, moving, brilliantly harrowing...a novel that makes the madness of war more than a metaphor.”—The New York Times

“Earns...a place on the shelf of WWI literature.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Extremely accomplished and intelligent... Barker is adept at dramatizing moral dilemmas that have no easy answers.”—Entertainment Weekly

“One of the most deserving winners of the prestigious Booker fiction prize in recent years.”—The New York Review of Books

“Pat Barker makes both her fictional and her real characters complex and credible....Best of all, she attends to the moral nuances of a time when it was hard to distinguish the lesser insanities from the greater ones.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“It has been Pat Barker’s accomplishment to enlarge the scope of the contemporary English novel....Regeneration is an inspiring book that balances conscience and thevitality of change against a collapsing world.”—The New Yorker