Pat Barker

Anne Whitehead (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)
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With the publication of the

Regeneration

trilogy (1991-5), Pat Barker’s status as a leading British novelist was confirmed.

The Eye in the Door

won the Guardian Prize for Fiction in 1993 and

The Ghost Road

was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1995. However, Barker’s earlier writing has often been dismissed as ‘working-class’, ‘regional’ or ‘women’s’ writing. Considered as a corpus, Barker’s fiction powerfully explores the ideas of trauma and recovery and these are important themes that connect her work. In trauma, time is disrupted and experience is subject to delay and retrospection. The temporal dislocation of trauma means that the traumatic event cannot be securely located in the past and consigned to history, but continues to produce effects in the present.…

2471 words

Citation: Whitehead, Anne. "Pat Barker". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 October 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5426, accessed 29 March 2024.]

5426 Pat Barker 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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