Pat Barker's Regeneration

I bought this book a while ago having seeing it listed in Carmen Callil & Colm Toibin's The Modern Library, The 200 best novels in English since 1950. But because I thought it's a novel about war (war not being one of my favourite reading subjects), I didn't get round to reading it until a few days ago when I decided to see what made it a prize winner.

Was I pleasantly surprised. This novel is, I must say, one of the best I've read this year. It's not really about war per se, rather it's about how combatants who'd broken down during the First World War were dealt with psychologically. Naturally, readers get to glimpse those moments of horror faced by the combatants in the trenches. An eye-opener!

This being the first of a Trilogy, I am really looking forward to reading The Eye in the Door and The Ghost Road next.