On This Page
Description
Craiglockhart War Hospital, 1917, where army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers' job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds, the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front... REGENERATION is the show more classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalized a generation of young men. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
ehines I can see someone thinking this is a stretcher, but these two trilogies will always live together in my mind--two different takes on the crises of modernity which, to me, seem harmonious.
31
Smiler69 Both works based on early 20th century psychological and psychiatric findings and research.
31
WeeTurtle Though I prefer "All Quiet..." I found it interesting to view the two books together as representing the fallout from each side of WWI.
pellethepoet Brief biography of Dr. Rivers, the psychiatrist who treated Siegfried Sassoon at Craiglockhart War Hospital
11
Member Reviews
The Publisher Says: Regeneration, one in Pat Barker's series of novels confronting the psychological effects of World War I, focuses on treatment methods during the war and the story of a decorated English officer sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he will no longer fight. Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear -- the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing -- it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award-winner The Ghost show more Road.
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to discuss the Great War novel you loved best.
This was *hard* because there have been several, two in the past year!, Great War-themed novels that I really love. I spent a sleepless night thinking about this. I re-read portions of both my recent reads that suit the prompt, and as much as I was enwrapt in [The Daughters of Mars], feeling the swirl and ebb of tidal feeling, I was utterly immersed in [Regeneration], I felt I was *there* and I was simply, unaccountably, invisible to the characters and so not remarked upon.
I know that Ms. Barker was born in 1943...imagine! 1943! Were there *people* then?...and so could not have witnessed the events that so utterly traumatized Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and so many thousands of other men, but you couldn't prove it by this:
If that doesn't sound exactly like something a survivor would think, I don't know what does. And yet she's 25 years younger than Armistice Day! Channeling? Spirit possession? Filing clerk for the Akashic Records Office?
That last sounds about right...anyway, there we are mise en scene with the survivors, the ones confronting a world that feels empowered to judge them for their responses to stimuli unknown to mere civilians:
Doesn't that sound like someone who hasn't had to do the job issuing a pronunciamento? An armchair warrior speaking from the privileged place of one who is defended, not one who defends. It was ever thus.
What a horror, then, to be trapped between a world that you fought to save, and that world's utter inability and complete unwillingness to learn what you lived:
That kind of knowledge would devastate Society! Undermine the Divinely Ordained Rules! Heresy!! It must be the case that these damaged men were weak, weak I say, unmanly and unworthy! It cannot be that what they lived through damaged them by its nature, or else codified gender (and skin-color) inequality is Wrong. And we all know that it is Right!
Ugh. But blessedly, the Great War began a process of (wrenching, painful) psychic change that the Ruling Elite has been resisting, beating back, discrediting at every opportunity, and with increasing success, for 95 years:
Look at the returned Iraq War and Afghan War veterans...disillusioned, mutilated in body and in soul even when bodies are whole, record numbers of veteran suicides stand to our national, human discredit, exactly as they did then, and all because:
If that sentence does not make you weep actual physical tears of helpless sadness and empathetic misery, you are wanting in basic human kindness.
In the end, the reason I selected this book as my favorite Great War novel ahead of all others, is this simple distillation of the pointlessness of war in the face of its costs:
My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt is to discuss the Great War novel you loved best.
This was *hard* because there have been several, two in the past year!, Great War-themed novels that I really love. I spent a sleepless night thinking about this. I re-read portions of both my recent reads that suit the prompt, and as much as I was enwrapt in [The Daughters of Mars], feeling the swirl and ebb of tidal feeling, I was utterly immersed in [Regeneration], I felt I was *there* and I was simply, unaccountably, invisible to the characters and so not remarked upon.
I know that Ms. Barker was born in 1943...imagine! 1943! Were there *people* then?...and so could not have witnessed the events that so utterly traumatized Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon and so many thousands of other men, but you couldn't prove it by this:
Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something, ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms. It was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough's army, than to think they'd been alive a year ago. It was as if all the other wars had distilled themselves into this war, and that made it something you almost can't challenge. It's like a very deep voice, saying: 'Run along, little man, be glad you've survived'.
If that doesn't sound exactly like something a survivor would think, I don't know what does. And yet she's 25 years younger than Armistice Day! Channeling? Spirit possession? Filing clerk for the Akashic Records Office?
That last sounds about right...anyway, there we are mise en scene with the survivors, the ones confronting a world that feels empowered to judge them for their responses to stimuli unknown to mere civilians:
The way I see it, when you put the uniform on, in effect you sign a contract. And you don't back out of a contract merely because you've changed your mind. You can still speak up for your principles, you can still argue against the ones you're being made to fight for, but in the end you do the job.
Doesn't that sound like someone who hasn't had to do the job issuing a pronunciamento? An armchair warrior speaking from the privileged place of one who is defended, not one who defends. It was ever thus.
What a horror, then, to be trapped between a world that you fought to save, and that world's utter inability and complete unwillingness to learn what you lived:
This reinforced Rivers’s view that it was prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness that did the damage, and not the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that the patients themselves were inclined to point to as the explanation for their condition. That would help to account for the greater prevalence of anxiety neuroses and hysterical disorders in women in peacetime, since their relatively more confined lives gave them fewer opportunities of reacting to stress in active and constructive ways. Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace.
That kind of knowledge would devastate Society! Undermine the Divinely Ordained Rules! Heresy!! It must be the case that these damaged men were weak, weak I say, unmanly and unworthy! It cannot be that what they lived through damaged them by its nature, or else codified gender (and skin-color) inequality is Wrong. And we all know that it is Right!
Ugh. But blessedly, the Great War began a process of (wrenching, painful) psychic change that the Ruling Elite has been resisting, beating back, discrediting at every opportunity, and with increasing success, for 95 years:
It was... the Great White God de-throned, I suppose. Because we did, we quite unselfconsciously assumed we were the measure of all things. That was how we approached them. And suddenly I saw that we weren't the measure of all things, but that there was no measure.
Look at the returned Iraq War and Afghan War veterans...disillusioned, mutilated in body and in soul even when bodies are whole, record numbers of veteran suicides stand to our national, human discredit, exactly as they did then, and all because:
You know you're walking around with a mask on, and you desperately want to take it off and you can't because everybody else thinks it's your face.
If that sentence does not make you weep actual physical tears of helpless sadness and empathetic misery, you are wanting in basic human kindness.
In the end, the reason I selected this book as my favorite Great War novel ahead of all others, is this simple distillation of the pointlessness of war in the face of its costs:
And as soon as you accepted that the man’s breakdown was a consequence of his war experience rather than his own innate weakness, then inevitably the war became the issue. And the therapy was a test, not only of the genuineness of the individual’s symptoms, but also of the validity of the demands the war was making on him. Rivers had survived partly by suppressing his awareness of this. But then along came Sassoon and made the justifiability of the war a matter for constant, open debate, and that suppression was no longer possible.show less
Maybe even 4½ stars. This historical-fiction novel centers around the poet Siegfried Sassoon and his psychiatrist Dr. Rivers during his stay at the mental hospital Craiglockhart during 1917.
The central theme is conflict between duty and survival which Rivers recognizes as the basis for most of the cases of "war neurosis", shell shock or as we now call it PTSD. Where do we draw the line between a soldier's duty and a completely reasonable desire to survive? The heart-wrenching part was the fact that many of the men (especially officers) didn't want (at least in the conscious part of their brain) to be posted in a "safe" position because they felt it was shameful to desert their men. The stress of being responsible for others without show more having any power to control conditions must have been enormous... show less
The central theme is conflict between duty and survival which Rivers recognizes as the basis for most of the cases of "war neurosis", shell shock or as we now call it PTSD. Where do we draw the line between a soldier's duty and a completely reasonable desire to survive? The heart-wrenching part was the fact that many of the men (especially officers) didn't want (at least in the conscious part of their brain) to be posted in a "safe" position because they felt it was shameful to desert their men. The stress of being responsible for others without show more having any power to control conditions must have been enormous... show less
A tremendously engrossing, imaginative story of WW1 soldiers sent to a psychiatric facility when various forms of shell shock incapacitate them.
Rivers, the head of treatment in this place, is a real historic figure, as is Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and others. Sassoon is placed there when Robert Graves pulls strings to prevent him from being court-martialed for writing a protest against this interminable war, without stated goals or purpose. As he is an officer and from the upper class, this is a serious offense, but if he can be regarded as mentally unfit, discounted.
The men's damage is all psychological, but no less real. One man cannot eat because of a horrific accident that he associates with food. One cannot walk, although show more not wounded, many cannot speak, some can only stutter, some have become paranoid about spies. One, a doctor, can no longer stand the sight of blood.
Barker's imagined life within this real situation is magical. The dialog is so natural and real, the relationships between the men, and some women, so real. One man goes on a day trip and meets a woman, a munitions worker yellowed by the substances she handles, which even rub off on the sheets, and we learn about how the war has opened opportunities for women who otherwise would have been servants, how the social order is being upended. Rivers and Sassoon, a fictional inmatef named Prior, and others have conversations that deeply affect each other, each knowing that to be proclaimed 'cured' means getting sent back to the horror of trench warfare.
This is the first of a trilogy of WW1, and I intend to read the other two as soon as possible. A powerful read. show less
Rivers, the head of treatment in this place, is a real historic figure, as is Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and others. Sassoon is placed there when Robert Graves pulls strings to prevent him from being court-martialed for writing a protest against this interminable war, without stated goals or purpose. As he is an officer and from the upper class, this is a serious offense, but if he can be regarded as mentally unfit, discounted.
The men's damage is all psychological, but no less real. One man cannot eat because of a horrific accident that he associates with food. One cannot walk, although show more not wounded, many cannot speak, some can only stutter, some have become paranoid about spies. One, a doctor, can no longer stand the sight of blood.
Barker's imagined life within this real situation is magical. The dialog is so natural and real, the relationships between the men, and some women, so real. One man goes on a day trip and meets a woman, a munitions worker yellowed by the substances she handles, which even rub off on the sheets, and we learn about how the war has opened opportunities for women who otherwise would have been servants, how the social order is being upended. Rivers and Sassoon, a fictional inmatef named Prior, and others have conversations that deeply affect each other, each knowing that to be proclaimed 'cured' means getting sent back to the horror of trench warfare.
This is the first of a trilogy of WW1, and I intend to read the other two as soon as possible. A powerful read. show less
War is not my usual reading topic but the characters were so interesting. I was unfamiliar with the term "neurasthenia" but consider it the equivalent of PTSD or shellshock. There are wonderful descriptive detail: "the silvery sound of shaken wheat, the shimmer of light on the stalks" (p.6) when passing a windblown wheat field.
It took me a couple weeks to read because I would stop to take in the message, to think about the implications. Barker isn't just writing about soldiering, but also about how our social customs and expectations affect us, and she uses Rivers' experiences as an anthropologist as comparative alternative. Can men be nurturing or express tenderness without being considered deviant (includes homosexual in that era)? show more The biblical story of Abraham sacrificing his son as the basis for patriarchal (Euro-American) societies which imply "If you, who are young and weak, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be a ble to exact the same obedience from your sons" (p.149). "The process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay" as the caterpillar in its chrysalis (p.184). The difference in symptoms of the emotional conflict or protest of what they are required to do between those who have power (i.e. upper class officers=stuttering, nightmares, tremors, memory lapses) and those who don't (working class=paralysis, mutism). The similarities of stress symptoms between the soldiers and low-income women: "The look of people who are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save" (p.107). The psychiatric treatment of PTSD in soldiers as really a silencing of them as humans, controlling people not to keep them from engaging in self-destructive behavior but allowing them to resume fighting which is positively suicidal (p.238).
I assumed from the blurb that Barker wanted to protest current wars but chose to clothe this perspective in the WWI era to make the topic more universal. And then I found out after reading the book that Siegfried Sassoon was a real person. Still, it does allow us the hindsight of knowing the WWII consequence of this trying to "shell the militarism out of the Hun". This turns out not to be a pacifist book so much as one which asks us to examine whether the purpose for any particular war is worth the cost.
Unrelated to the main themes, I wondered if Sassoon's advice to Own on writing poetry, and selection of words was advice this author used as her own guide. It is quite admirable writing. show less
It took me a couple weeks to read because I would stop to take in the message, to think about the implications. Barker isn't just writing about soldiering, but also about how our social customs and expectations affect us, and she uses Rivers' experiences as an anthropologist as comparative alternative. Can men be nurturing or express tenderness without being considered deviant (includes homosexual in that era)? show more The biblical story of Abraham sacrificing his son as the basis for patriarchal (Euro-American) societies which imply "If you, who are young and weak, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and be a ble to exact the same obedience from your sons" (p.149). "The process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay" as the caterpillar in its chrysalis (p.184). The difference in symptoms of the emotional conflict or protest of what they are required to do between those who have power (i.e. upper class officers=stuttering, nightmares, tremors, memory lapses) and those who don't (working class=paralysis, mutism). The similarities of stress symptoms between the soldiers and low-income women: "The look of people who are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save" (p.107). The psychiatric treatment of PTSD in soldiers as really a silencing of them as humans, controlling people not to keep them from engaging in self-destructive behavior but allowing them to resume fighting which is positively suicidal (p.238).
I assumed from the blurb that Barker wanted to protest current wars but chose to clothe this perspective in the WWI era to make the topic more universal. And then I found out after reading the book that Siegfried Sassoon was a real person. Still, it does allow us the hindsight of knowing the WWII consequence of this trying to "shell the militarism out of the Hun". This turns out not to be a pacifist book so much as one which asks us to examine whether the purpose for any particular war is worth the cost.
Unrelated to the main themes, I wondered if Sassoon's advice to Own on writing poetry, and selection of words was advice this author used as her own guide. It is quite admirable writing. show less
Wow - Pat Barker somehow really seems to delve into the psychology of soldiers during World War I. Not like I would specifically know that area, but she occasionally twists things in interesting ways. Like a soldier with amnesia using hypnosis to figure out a forgotten few days that led to his breakdown, only to be upset that what is revealed isn't AS BAD as he expected: "That's all?!!?" But the switching perspectives both from patients and the doctor, keeps moving the pace along. There is a lot of gentle humor here which cuts through such a tough nightmarish subject. The setting is a mental institution, but not the place for the severe patients. It isn't sappy like you'd think most War books COULD be -- it ticks right along, it's show more honest. And for good or ill, some of these characters are based on real people. Of course none of these kids who survived the trenches were actually insane -- their situation was insane. An impossible situation. I have the remainder of the Regeneration trilogy up on deck... we'll see how it goes, but it's a great start.
*Book #129 I have read of the '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' show less
*Book #129 I have read of the '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die' show less
Normally a cure implies that the patient will no longer engage in behaviour that is clearly self-destructive. But in present circumstances, recovery meant the resumption of activities that were not merely self-destructive but positively suicidal.
Such are the conclusions of Dr. Rivers, a psychiatrist working with shell-shocked soldiers in 1917 England. His most recent patient is Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and decorated soldier, who has written a declaration calling the war a senseless slaughter without a clear objective. This is enough to land Sassoon in Craiglockhart War Hospital as a patient until he can be cured and returned to the front. Dr. Rivers is treating many patients: a man so traumatized by a gruesome accident that he will show more never recover, a doctor now unable to stand the sight of blood, a young man unable to remember what happened that caused his breakdown. But there is something about Sassoon and his articulate condemnation of the war that causes a crisis of conscience for Dr. Rivers.
Bits. The scold's bridle used to silence recalcitrant women in the Middle Ages. More recently, on American slaves. And yet on the ward, listening to the list of Callan's battles, he'd felt that nothing Callan could say could have been more powerful than his silence. Later, {after treatment by Dr. Yealland forces Callan to begin speaking again}, Rivers had felt that he was witnessing the silencing of a human being. Indeed, Yealland had come very close to saying just that. 'You must speak, but I shall not listen to anything you have to say.'
...Just as Yealland silenced the unconscious protest of his patients by removing the paralysis, the deafness, the blindness, the muteness that stood between them and the war, so, in an infinitely more gentle way, he silenced his patients; for the stammerings, the nightmares, the tremors, the memory lapses, of officers were just as much unwitting protest as the grosser maladies of the men.
This novel fascinated me on so many levels. There is the philosophical, but very real arguments about the morality of the war; the psychiatric effects of war trauma on soldiers; the medical ethics of experimenting on oneself or using brutal methods; the use of mythology in the treatment of trauma; and the social effects as homosexuality begins to be acknowledged in British society.
He distrusted the implication that nurturing, even when done by a man, remains female, as if the ability were in some way borrowed, or even stolen, from women-a sort of moral equivalent of couvade. If that were true, then there was really very little hope.
...Rivers had been touched by the way in which young men, some of them not yet twenty, spoke about feeling like fathers to their men. Though when you looked at what they did. Worrying about socks, boots, blisters, food, hot drinks. And that perpetually harried expression of theirs... It was the look of people who are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save.
But what really struck me about this novel is that it is based on actual people, declarations, and treatments. In a brief Author's Note at the end of the book, which I found helpful to read first, the reader is told which characters were real people and cites the sources for the various methods of treatment which Drs. Rivers and Yealland used. On the spectrum between fact and fiction, the author skews to the actual, and I was amazed at how deftly she brought the historical to life. [Regeneration] is the first in a trilogy that I look forward to continuing. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the psychology of war. show less
Such are the conclusions of Dr. Rivers, a psychiatrist working with shell-shocked soldiers in 1917 England. His most recent patient is Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and decorated soldier, who has written a declaration calling the war a senseless slaughter without a clear objective. This is enough to land Sassoon in Craiglockhart War Hospital as a patient until he can be cured and returned to the front. Dr. Rivers is treating many patients: a man so traumatized by a gruesome accident that he will show more never recover, a doctor now unable to stand the sight of blood, a young man unable to remember what happened that caused his breakdown. But there is something about Sassoon and his articulate condemnation of the war that causes a crisis of conscience for Dr. Rivers.
Bits. The scold's bridle used to silence recalcitrant women in the Middle Ages. More recently, on American slaves. And yet on the ward, listening to the list of Callan's battles, he'd felt that nothing Callan could say could have been more powerful than his silence. Later, {after treatment by Dr. Yealland forces Callan to begin speaking again}, Rivers had felt that he was witnessing the silencing of a human being. Indeed, Yealland had come very close to saying just that. 'You must speak, but I shall not listen to anything you have to say.'
...Just as Yealland silenced the unconscious protest of his patients by removing the paralysis, the deafness, the blindness, the muteness that stood between them and the war, so, in an infinitely more gentle way, he silenced his patients; for the stammerings, the nightmares, the tremors, the memory lapses, of officers were just as much unwitting protest as the grosser maladies of the men.
This novel fascinated me on so many levels. There is the philosophical, but very real arguments about the morality of the war; the psychiatric effects of war trauma on soldiers; the medical ethics of experimenting on oneself or using brutal methods; the use of mythology in the treatment of trauma; and the social effects as homosexuality begins to be acknowledged in British society.
He distrusted the implication that nurturing, even when done by a man, remains female, as if the ability were in some way borrowed, or even stolen, from women-a sort of moral equivalent of couvade. If that were true, then there was really very little hope.
...Rivers had been touched by the way in which young men, some of them not yet twenty, spoke about feeling like fathers to their men. Though when you looked at what they did. Worrying about socks, boots, blisters, food, hot drinks. And that perpetually harried expression of theirs... It was the look of people who are totally responsible for lives they have no power to save.
But what really struck me about this novel is that it is based on actual people, declarations, and treatments. In a brief Author's Note at the end of the book, which I found helpful to read first, the reader is told which characters were real people and cites the sources for the various methods of treatment which Drs. Rivers and Yealland used. On the spectrum between fact and fiction, the author skews to the actual, and I was amazed at how deftly she brought the historical to life. [Regeneration] is the first in a trilogy that I look forward to continuing. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the psychology of war. show less
This is a searingly intimate examination of the horrors and the cost of WWI, manifested in the paralyzing physical symptoms -- agonizing nightmares, paraplegia with no injury, incapacity for speech, uncontrollable vomiting, violent twitching, stammering, and hallucinations -- of the severely shellshocked British soldiers sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital after being deemed "mentally unsound." Here they are treated with compassion and gentleness by renowned psychiatrist and anthropologist Dr. Rivers. Rivers's job is to treat the men and make a recommendation to the medical board for their future service to the British military. Ideally, the men should become well enough to return to the front. Rivers learns with some trepidation that he show more is to treat Siegfried Sassoon, a poet and decorated soldier, universally loved and trusted by his men. When Sassoon publishes a declaration opposing the continuance of the war (and accusations that those with the power to negotiate cessation of hostilities choose not to do so at horrific cost to hundreds of thousands of lives), he is declared shell-shocked in an attempt to discredit his views. Rivers treats Sassoon and others, working himself to exhaustion, and eventually having his views altered about the justification for war as he hears his patients' experiences and when considering the cost to human life, health, and sanity. I was surprised to learn that Sassoon, Rivers, and other characters were real people, which makes Ms. Barker's novel even more important and impressive. The big themes explored here are still as relevant today -- justification for continuing war, national consciousness, duty and bravery, sacrifice, horror, trauma, and healing, and especially what next and why? Regeneration is the first book of a trilogy, which I will return to at some point. For the present, this book will stay with me for a long time. show less
Members
- Recently Added By
Lists
The Guardian's 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read
1,005 works; 546 members
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
1,448 works; 1,131 members
Best Historical Fiction
620 works; 261 members
Recommend the 20 best books you've read in the last five years
2,168 works; 606 members
BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World
100 works; 22 members
Historical Fiction
889 works; 91 members
Read the book and saw the movie
1,170 works; 195 members
20th Century Literature
1,161 works; 55 members
Top Five Books of 2013
1,562 works; 721 members
Unread books
1,063 works; 86 members
Favourite Books
1,817 works; 316 members
Female Author
1,235 works; 67 members
World War I Fiction
94 works; 15 members
Stories of War and Revolution
143 works; 54 members
500 Great Books by Women
507 works; 60 members
Top Five Books of 2014
1,064 works; 398 members
Banned or Challenged Books
400 works; 37 members
Top Five Books of 2018
802 works; 265 members
1,001 BYMRBYD Concensus
723 works; 27 members
War Literature
101 works; 19 members
Five star books
1,755 works; 108 members
Top Five Books of 2017
757 works; 230 members
Books Read in 2014
2,342 works; 86 members
BBC Radio 4 Bookclub
340 works; 13 members
Lives of the Poets (and Philosophers)
110 works; 5 members
Writers as Characters in Fiction
120 works; 19 members
2022 Christmas Gifts
60 works; 13 members
Historical Fiction Lovers
88 works; 4 members
Books about World War I
80 works; 14 members
World War I books
32 works; 6 members
World War I - fiction & non-fiction
19 works; 4 members
Good LGBT fiction for LGBT folk and friends
537 works; 54 members
Books Read in 2003
257 works; 7 members
Books Read in 2006
421 works; 8 members
My TBR
371 works; 3 members
Books Read in 2018
4,360 works; 110 members
Page Turners
185 works; 11 members
Best War Fiction Books
41 works; 4 members
Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die: A Life Changing List
1,001 works; 18 members
Puffin Books 70th anniversary handbook recommendations
537 works; 10 members
THE WAR ROOM
813 works; 24 members
BBC World Book Club
261 works; 5 members
Stephen King's 'On Writing' reading list
95 works; 4 members
Books Read in 2024
4,623 works; 126 members
Books We Couldn't Put Down
443 works; 197 members
Books Read in 2026
1,754 works; 62 members
Alphabetical Books
211 works; 3 members
Talk Discussions
Past Discussions
***Group Read: Regerneration in 1001 Books to read before you die (November 2010)
Author Information
31+ Works 21,416 Members
Pat Barker's most recent novel is Another World (FSG, 1999). She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy: Regeneration; The Eye in the Door, winner of the 1993 Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road, winner of the 1996 Booker Prize. She lives in England. (Bowker Author Biography)
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Distinctions
Notable Lists
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Work Relationships
Is contained in
Has the adaptation
Is abridged in
Has as a reference guide/companion
Has as a student's study guide
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Niemandsland
- Original title
- Regeneration
- Alternate titles*
- Zhong sheng
- Original publication date
- 1991
- People/Characters
- William Rivers; Siegfried Sassoon; Billy Prior; Robert Graves; David Burns; Wilfred Owen (show all 7); Sarah Lumb
- Important places
- Edinburgh, Scotland, UK; Arras, Pas-de-Calais, Hauts-de-France, France; Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
- Important events
- World War I
- Related movies
- Regeneration (1997 | IMDb)
- Dedication
- For David, and in loving memory of
Dr John Hawkings (1922 - 1987) - First words
- I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
- Quotations
- Anna didn't believe in love. She thought when a man loved a woman it was as the fox loves the hare, and when a woman loved a man it was as a tapeworm loves the gut.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)He drew the final page towards him and wrote: Nov. 26, 1917. Discharged to duty.
- Blurbers
- Weldon, Fay
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 4,911
- Popularity
- 2,848
- Reviews
- 122
- Rating
- (4.03)
- Languages
- 14 — Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Chinese, simplified
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 66
- ASINs
- 18