Summary of Regeneration
Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated British war hero and poet, publishes an anti-war declaration in 1917, in which he denounces the senseless horrors of the First World War. As a consequence, he is sent to a military psychiatric hospital for shell-shocked officers in Craiglockhart, a suburb of Edinburgh. There, he meets fellow patients, many of them poets and writers, and Dr Rivers, an integer psychiatrist and fatherly figure to Sassoon. Although Rivers is deeply troubled by the war himself, his duty is to treat his patients’ trauma so they can return to the trenches – or, if they are merely conscientious objectors, to declare them fit to be sent back to fight regardless.
Reasons to read Regeneration
“Regeneration” is a complex yet compelling anti-war novel about post-traumatic stress disorder and the broader toll of war on people. The book features real-life figures such as soldier-poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, writer Robert Graves, and Dr Rivers, alongside fictional characters. “Regeneration” is the first novel in a trilogy, followed by “The Eye in the Door” and “The Ghost Road” (which won the 1995 Booker Prize). Pat Barker is a renowned English writer, best known for the “Regeneration” trilogy and her later trilogy on the Trojan War, which includes “The Silence of the Girls” (winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction), “The Women of Troy”, and “The Voyage Home”. In 1997, “Regeneration” was adapted into a film of the same name, directed by Gillies MacKinnon. In 2019, the BBC included “Regeneration” in its list of the 100 most influential novels.
Setting: Edinburgh (Scotland, UK)
Craiglockhart War Hospital is now the building of Edinburgh Napier University, Craiglockhart Campus.
Original title: Regeneration
Year of publication: 1991
Nr of pages: 256
