Double Vision - Softcover

Barker, Pat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140270752 ISBN 13: 9780140270754

Publisher: Penguin, 2004

Synopsis

From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls

A powerfully thought-provoking portrait of modern warfare from one of the modern masters of war fiction

'Barker is one of our most significant contemporary novelists' Daily Telegraph

'The characters grab hold at the beginning and never loosen their grip. Barker holds us by the sheer beauty of her writing' Financial Times

'Barker has a quite extraordinary ability to combine complexity and clarity and to make both seem parts of the same whole' Sunday Times

Returning to Afghanistan after his photographer friend is killed by a sniper, war reporter Stephen Sharkey seeks release from his nightmares in an England seemingly at peace with itself. Questioning man's inhumanity to man both abroad and at home, and whether love really can be the great redeemer, Double Vision is a searing novel of conflict in modern times.

About this title

Review:

"A story that is both terrifying and fascinating....Wholly engrossing." --Neil Gordon, "New York Times Book Review" "One doesn't often find the caliber of writing displayed in Barker's latest, a compulsively readable novel." --Joanne Wilinson, "Booklist" "As briskly taut as a thriller and, at the same time, a deeply thoughtful consideration of how our lives are changed by sweeping historical tragedy and everyday acts of violence...We keep paging rapidly through the novel, even as we pause to admire the trenchant reflections." --Francine Prose, " O" Magazine

Synopsis:

Insomnia, exhaustion, recurring nightmares Stephen Sharkey is suffering the aftereffects of his career as a war reporter, most recently in Afghanistan, where Ben Frobisher, war photographer and friend, has been shot dead on assignment. Hanging up his flak jacket and turning his back on the everyday reality of war, Stephen moves into a quiet and peaceful cottage in the north of England. It seems the perfect environment in which to write his book on the representations of war one that will be based largely on Ben Frobisher's work. But Stephen's supposed isolation offers no protection from other people's suffering or the shattering effects of human brutality ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0140270752
• ISBN 13: 9780140270754
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320