Audiobooks by Pat Barker

"Brought to you by Penguin. The exhilarating follow-up to Pat Barker's The Women of Troy and The Silence of the Girls After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle. Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks – among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine – war-wife – to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death – and her own – while Ritsa is forced to bear witness to both Cassandra’s frenzies and the horrors to come. Meanwhile, awaiting the fleet’s return is Queen Clytemnestra, vengeful wife of Agamemnon. Heart-shattered by her husband’s choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy, she has spent this long decade plotting retribution, in a palace haunted by child-ghosts. As one wife journeys toward the other, united by the vision of Agamemnon’s death, one thing is certain: this long-awaited homecoming will change everyone’s fates forever. Praise for Pat Barker: 'Barker delves unflinchingly into the enduring mysteries of human motivation' Sunday Telegraph 'She is not only a fine chronicler of war but of human nature' Independent 'Barker is a writer of crispness and clarity and an unflinching seeker of the germ of what it means to be human' Herald 'You go to her for plain truths, a driving storyline and a clear eye, steadily facing the history of our world' Guardian ©2024 Pat Barker (P)2024 Penguin Audio"

Pat Barker (Author), Kristin Atherton (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Women of Troy

"Brought to you by Penguin. Following her bestselling, critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker continues her extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest myths. Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home as victors - all they need is a good wind to lift their sails. But the wind has vanished, the seas becalmed by vengeful gods, and so the warriors remain in limbo - camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, kept company by the women they stole from it. The women of Troy. Helen - poor Helen. All that beauty, all that grace - and she was just a mouldy old bone for feral dogs to fight over. Cassandra, who has learned not to be too attached to her own prophecies. They have only ever been believed when she can get a man to deliver them. Stubborn Amina, with her gaze still fixed on the ruined towers of Troy, determined to avenge the slaughter of her king. Hecuba, howling and clawing her cheeks on the silent shore, as if she could make her cries heard in the gloomy halls of Hades. As if she could wake the dead. And Briseis, carrying her future in her womb: the unborn child of the dead hero Achilles. Once again caught up in the disputes of violent men. Once again faced with the chance to shape history. Masterful and enduringly resonant, ambitious and intimate, The Women of Troy continues Pat Barker's extraordinary retelling of one of our greatest classical myths, following on from the critically acclaimed The Silence of the Girls. 'Taut, masterly, wholly absorbing. Still one of the greatest stories ever written. A book that will be read in generations to come' Daily Telegraph on The Silence of the Girls © Pat Barker 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Pat Barker (Author), Kristin Atherton (Narrator)

Audiobook

Regeneration

"Brought to you by Penguin. The modern classic of contemporary war fiction from Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls Recommended by Richard Osman Regeneration is the first novel in Pat Barker's Booker Prize-winning Regeneration trilogy - a powerfully moving portrait of the deep legacy of human trauma in the First World War Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers's job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients' minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front. Pat Barker's Regeneration is the classic exploration of how the traumas of war brutalised a generation of young men. 'Brilliant, intense and subtle' Peter Kemp, Sunday Times 'One of the strongest and most interesting novelists of her generation' Guardian 'Unforgettable' Sunday Telegraph © Pat Barker 1991 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Pat Barker (Author), Simon Russell Beale (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Eye in the Door

"Brought to you by Penguin. The masterful second novel in Pat Barker's classic 'Regeneration' trilogy - from the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls WINNER OF THE 1993 GUARDIAN FICTION PRIZE London, 1918. Billy Prior is working for Intelligence in the Ministry of Munitions. But his private encounters with women and men - pacifists, objectors, homosexuals - conflict with his duties as a soldier, and it is not long before his sense of himself fragments and breaks down. Forced to consult the man who helped him before - army psychiatrist William Rivers - Prior must confront his inability to be the dutiful soldier his superiors wish him to be. The Eye in the Door is a heart-rending study of the contradictions of war and of those forced to live through it. 'Spellbinding and startlingly original' Sunday Telegraph 'Gripping, moving, profoundly intelligent' Independent on Sunday 'A new vision of what the First World War did to human beings, male and female, soldiers and civilians' A. S. Byatt, Daily Telegraph © Pat Barker 1993 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Pat Barker (Author), Simon Russell Beale (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Ghost Road

"Brought to you by Penguin. The Booker Prize-winning final novel in Pat Barker's classic 'Regeneration' trilogy - from the acclaimed author of The Silence of the Girls 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 a vivid and unforgettable account of the devastating final months of the First World War. 'An extraordinary tour de force. One of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction' Jonathan Coe 'Powerful, deeply moving... A triumph' Sunday Times 'Harrowing, original, unforgettable' Independent © Pat Barker 1995 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Pat Barker (Author), Simon Russell Beale (Narrator)

Audiobook

Double Vision

"Brought to you by Penguin. 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 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. '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 © Pat Barker 2003 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Pat Barker (Author), Colin Salmon (Narrator)

Audiobook

Border Crossing

"Brought to you by Penguin. An unflinching novel on the nature of evil from the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer. Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tom become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back? 'Rich, surprising, breathtaking' The Times 'A tremendous piece of writing, sad and terrifying. It keeps you reading, exhausted and blurry-eyed, until 2am' Independent on Sunday 'Barker probes not only the mysteries of 'evil' but society's horrified and incoherent response to it' Guardian 'Brilliantly crafted. Unflinching yet sensitive, this is a dark story expertly told' Daily Mail © Pat Barker 2002 (P) Penguin Audio 2021"

Pat Barker (Author), Jeremy Irvine (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Silence of the Girls

"Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, read by Kristin Atherton and Michael Fox. A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY From the Booker Prize-winning author of Regeneration Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, the Costa Novel Award and the International DUBLIN Literary Award There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan war whose voice has been silent - till now. Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness that history forgot . . . 'Magnificent. You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening Standard 'Chilling, powerful, audacious' The Times Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is slave to Achilles, the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive to become the author of her own story?"

Pat Barker (Author), Kristin Atherton, Michael Fox (Narrator)

Audiobook

Noonday

"Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Noonday by Pat Barker, read by Juliet Stevenson, Stephen Boxer, John Sackville, Anne Reid & Finlay Robertson From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls The final novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, from one of our greatest writers on war and the human heart 'Bold, hard-hitting, unforgettable, with luminous and unsparing insight' Independent on Sunday 'Barker's command of detail and gift for metaphor are as sharp as ever... Noonday is in the first rank' Mail on Sunday '[There is] no end to her talent in describing how conflicts rupture the soul' Arifa Akbar, Independent London, the Blitz, autumn 1940. As the bombs fall on the blacked-out city, ambulance driver Elinor Brooke races from bomb sites to hospitals trying to save the lives of injured survivors, working alongside former friend Kit Neville, while her husband Paul works as an air-raid warden. As the bombing intensifies, the constant risk of death makes all three of them reach out for quick consolation. Old loves and obsessions re-surface until Elinor is brought face to face with an almost impossible choice. Writing about the Second World War for the first time, Pat Barker brings the besieged and haunted city of London into electrifying life. The Life Class trilogy: Life Class Toby's Room Noonday"

Pat Barker (Author), Anne Reid, Finlay Robertson, John Sackville, Juliet Stevenson, Stephen Boxer (Narrator)

Audiobook

Life Class

"Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of the first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, from one of our greatest writers on war and the human heart From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls 'Triumphant, inspiring, shattering' The Times 'Barker writes as brilliantly as ever... With great tenderness and insight she conveys a wartime world turned upside down' Independent on Sunday 'Masterly, gripping' Penelope Lively 'Extraordinarily powerful' Sunday Telegraph Spring, 1914. The students at the Slade School of Art gather in Henry Tonks's studio for his life-drawing class. But for Paul Tarrant the class is troubling, underscoring his own uncertainty about making a mark on the world. When war breaks out and the army won't take Paul, he enlists in the Belgian Red Cross just as he and fellow student Elinor Brooke admit their feelings for one another. Amidst the devastation in Ypres, Paul comes to see the world anew - but have his experiences changed him completely? The Life Class trilogy: Life Class Toby's Room Noonday"

Pat Barker (Author), Eve Webster, Finlay Robertson, Juliet Prague, Kieran Bew (Narrator)

Audiobook

Toby's Room

"Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of the second novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - a dark and compelling examination of desire, friendship and the horror of war, from one of our greatest writers on war and the human heart From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls 'Heart-rending... Toby's Room anatomises a world where extreme emotion shatters the boundaries of identity, behaviour, gender' Independent 'Once again Barker skilfully moves between past and present, seamlessly weaving fact and fiction into a gripping narrative' Sunday Telegraph When Toby is reported 'Missing, Believed Killed', another secret casts a lengthening shadow over Elinor's world: how exactly did Toby die - and why? Elinor determines to uncover the truth. Only then can she finally close the door to Toby's room. Moving from the Slade School of Art to Queen Mary's Hospital, where surgery and art intersect in the rebuilding of the shattered faces of the wounded, Toby's Room is a riveting drama of identity, damage, intimacy and loss. The Life Class trilogy: Life Class Toby's Room Noonday"

Pat Barker (Author), Eve Webster, Finlay Robertson, Juliet Prague, Kieran Bew (Narrator)

Audiobook