Pat Barker

Anne Whitehead (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of York), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

Born 8 May 1943
Activity 1963-ongoing

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Barker's Works

Save to Bookshelf

With the publication of the

Regeneration

trilogy (1991-5), Pat Barker’s status as a leading British novelist was confirmed.

The Eye in the Door

won the Guardian Prize for Fiction in 1993 and

The Ghost Road

was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1995. However, Barker’s earlier writing has often been dismissed as ‘working-class’, ‘regional’ or ‘women’s’ writing. Considered as a corpus, Barker’s fiction powerfully explores the ideas of trauma and recovery and these are important themes that connect her work. In trauma, time is disrupted and experience is subject to delay and retrospection. The temporal dislocation of trauma means that the traumatic event cannot be securely located in the past and consigned to history, but continues to produce effects in the present.…

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2471 words

Citation: Whitehead, Anne. "Pat Barker". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 October 2004 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5426, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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