Toby's Room

Pat Barker confirms her place in the pantheon of Britain's finest novelists with a masterful novel that portrays the staggering human cost of the Great War. Admirers of the Regeneration trilogy and fans of Downton Abbey alike will be enthralled.

The incomparable Booker Prize winner once again demonstrates her ability to eloquently convey simple, moving truths. The enormity of the war's impact—not only on soldiers at the front but on the loved ones they leave behind—is poignantly expressed in her unflinching and elegant prose.

ReviewPraise for Life Class“Beautiful and evocative . . . A coming-of-age story that transcends the individual and gestures to the fate of a generation.”—*People

“Life Class possesses organic power and narrative sweep . . . Barker conjures up the hellish terrors of war and its fallout with meticulous precision.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Here, as in her best fiction, Barker unveils psychologically rich characters . . . and resists the trappings of a neat love story, reminding us once again that in art and life we remain infinitely mysterious.”—San Francisco Chronicle

*Praise for the Regeneration Trilogy

“A masterwork . . . complex and ambitious.”—The New York Times Book Review

“It has been Pat Barker’s accomplishment to enlarge the scope of the contemporary English novel.”—The New Yorker

“A literary achievement . . . remarkable.”—San Francisco Chronicle“Some of the most powerful antiwar writing in modern fiction.”— The Boston Globe

About the AuthorPAT BARKER is most recently the author of Life Class, as well as the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy: Regeneration; The Eye in the Door, winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize; and The Ghost Road, winner of the Booker Prize; as well as seven other novels. She lives in the north of England.