The Ghost Road

Book excerpt: The Ghost Road is the final instalment in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy. WINNER OF THE 1995 BOOKER PRIZE. 1918, the closing months of the war. Army psychiatrist William Rivers is increasingly concerned for the men who have been in his care - particularly Billy Prior, who is about to return to combat in France with young poet Wilfred Owen. As Rivers tries to make sense of what, if anything, he has done to help these injured men, Prior and Owen await the final battles in a war that has decimated a generation ... The Ghost Road is the Booker Prize-winning account of the devastating final months of the First World War. 'An extraordinary tour de force. I'm convinced that the trilogy will win recognition as one of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction' Jonathan Coe 'Powerful, deeply moving' Barry Unsworth, Sunday Times 'Harrowing, original, unforgettable' Independent 'A triumph' Sunday Times Other titles in the trilogy: Regeneration The Eye in the Door