Regeneration is a historical and anti-war novel by Pat Barker, first published in 1991. The novel was a Booker Prize nominee and was described by the New York Times Book Review as one of the four best novels of the year in its year of publication. It is the first of three novels in the Regeneration Trilogy of novels on the First World War, the other two being The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize in 1995. The novel was adapted into a film by the same name in 1997 by Scottish film director Gillies MacKinnon and starring Jonathan Pryce as Rivers, James Wilby as Sassoon and Jonny Lee Miller as Prior. The film was successful in the UK and Canada, receiving nominations for a number of awards.
First edition cover
Craiglockhart War Hospital, now a part of Edinburgh Napier University
Casualties after a charge in France during World War I. Multiple characters describe their traumatic experiences during battle, and this discussion of trauma and the broken body caused by war becomes thematically central to the novel.
Original manuscript of Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth", showing Sassoon's revisions. Barker recreates the revision process for the poem in Regeneration
Patricia Mary W. Barker, is a British writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and plainspoken. In 2012, The Observer named the Regeneration Trilogy as one of "The 10 best historical novels".
Pat Barker in October 2012
