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The ghost road / Pat Barker.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Barker, Pat, Regeneration trilogy ; Publication details: New York, N.Y. : Plume/Penguin, 1996, c1995.Edition: 1st Plume printDescription: 277 p. ; 21 cmISBN:
  • 0452276721 (pbk.) :
  • 9780452276727 (pbk.) :
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Awards:
  • Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 1995.
Summary: 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.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Vol info Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Fiction Barker Pat RE 3 Available 33111007030931
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

  The final book in the Regeneration Trilogy, and winner of the 1995 Booker Prize
 
The Ghost Road is the culminating masterpiece of Pat Barker's towering World War I fiction trilogy. The time of the novel is the closing months of the most senselessly savage of modern conflicts. 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.

Combining poetic intensity with gritty realism, blending biting humor with tragic drama, moving toward a denouement as inevitable as it is devastating, The Ghost Road both encapsulates history and transcends it. It is a modern masterpiece
 

"A William Abrahams book."

"Previously published in a Dutton edition"--T.p. verso.

Includes bibliographical references.

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.

Man Booker Prize for Fiction, 1995.

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