Regeneration

Craiglockhart, Scotland, 1917. In a hospital for shell-shocked officers, a brilliant doctor provides the cures required to send his patients back to War. Under his tolerant reign, two young officers form a passionate comradeship. Each is a poet, one unknown, the other privileged and successful. Mentored by the older man, the younger falls in love; his genius flowers and he becomes the greater writer. But as his health is restored, he must face a return to battle.

**

"Nicholas Wright's deeply moving play stays true to Barker's vision while highlighting its own chosen themes of companionship, guilt and inequality" Michael Billington, Guardian

"I was raptly absorbed throughout by this superb stage version of Pat Barker's award-winning First World War novel...gutting and unmissable" Paul Taylor, The Independent

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 Road.