Anatomy of a Soldier - Softcover

Parker, Harry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571325831 ISBN 13: 9780571325832

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2016

Synopsis

Imagine if your whole life changed in the blink of an eye . . .

Captain Tom Barnes is leading British troops into a war zone when he is gravely injured by an exploding IED. This devastating moment and the transformative months that follow are narrated here by forty-five objects, telling one unforgettable story.

About this title

Review:

A great novel: a ­defining work . . . It will be read with wonder, with respect and with gratitude. , New Statesman

Surprising and daring . . . Inanimate objects tell the story of a soldier's catastrophic tour of Afghanistan and its aftermath. It sounds odd but it's entirely engaging, thought provoking and moving. -- Val McDermid, Guardian 'Books of the Year'

It is a novel of concentrated ferocity and chilling accomplishments, tense and unflinching but alive to every nuance of feeling. -- Hilary Mantel

Impressive, starkly different . . . a poignant and humbling piece of writing. -- Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers’ Reading Club

Viscerally authentic . . . compelling and ultimately moving., Sunday Times

Ambitious ... [takes] its readers far beyond the limits of the conventional war memoir., Sunday Herald

There isn't a single perspective in Anatomy of a Soldier that doesn't have a ring of truth., Evening Standard

It's marvellously told and this way of telling it ... giving the inanimate a voice ... is both engrossing and distancing and I know of nothing quite like it. -- Alan Bennett

This is a brilliant book, direct from the battle zone, where all the paraphernalia of slaughter is deployed to tell its particular and savage story. -- Edna O'Brien

We've become desensitized to war stories, but Harry Parker - not simply through the originality of his approach but also through skillful storytelling, intimate observation, and an endless ability to surprise and move the reader - cuts past our calluses and delivers a bold new narrative of war and its aftermath. -- Phil Klay, author of Redeployment

From the Author:

Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire. He was educated at Falmouth College of Art and University College London. He joined the British Army when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009 as a Captain. He is now a writer and artist and lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0571325831
• ISBN 13: 9780571325832
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320