Regeneration
Regeneration is a prize-winning 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.[1] 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.[2] The novel was adapted into a film by the same name in 1997 by Scottish film director Gillies MacKinnon and staring Jonathan Pryce as Rivers, James Wilby as Sassoon and Jonny Lee Miller as Prior.
The novel explores the experience of British army officers being treated for shell shock during World War I at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. Inspired by her grandfather's experience of World War I, Barker draws extensively on first person narratives from the period. Using these source, she created characters based on historical individuals present at the hospital including poets and patients, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and psychologist W.H.R. Rivers, who pioneered treatments of PTSD during and after WWI. The title of the novel refers to Rivers' research into "nerve regeneration". Barker also includes fictional characters, based on the larger cultural experience of the period, including an officer who grew up in the lower classes, Richard Prior, and his girlfriend and munitionette, Sarah Lumb.
Thematically, the novel is very complex exploring the effect of the War on the characters, masculinity and social structures. Moreover, the novel draws extensively on period psychological practices, emphasizing River's research as well as Freudian psychology. Through the novel Barker enters a particular tradition of representing the experience of World War I in literature: many critics compare the novel to other World War I novels, and in particular to other novels by women writers, interested in the domestic
The novel explores the experience of British army officers being treated for shell shock during World War I at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh. Inspired by her grandfather's experience of World War I, Barker draws extensively on first person narratives from the period. Using these source, she created characters based on historical individuals present at the hospital including poets and patients, Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and psychologist W.H.R. Rivers, who pioneered treatments of PTSD during and after WWI. The title of the novel refers to Rivers' research into "nerve regeneration". Barker also includes fictional characters, based on the larger cultural experience of the period, including an officer who grew up in the lower classes, Richard Prior, and his girlfriend and munitionette, Sarah Lumb.
Thematically, the novel is very complex exploring the effect of the War on the characters, masculinity and social structures. Moreover, the novel draws extensively on period psychological practices, emphasizing River's research as well as Freudian psychology. Through the novel Barker enters a particular tradition of representing the experience of World War I in literature: many critics compare the novel to other World War I novels, and in particular to other novels by women writers, interested in the domestic