Pat Barker

The Ghost Road Pat Barker

Winner of the Booker Prize! Central to this novel are two men divided by class and experience, but sharing a mutual respect and empathy. One is Lieutenant Billy Prior, cured of shell shock by famed psychologist Dr. William Rivers, and determined to return to the front in France even as World War I enters its final ferocious phase. The other is Dr. Rivers himself, consumed by the medical challenge and moral dilemma of restoring men to health so that they can be sent back to the battlefields and almost certain death. Billy Prior is a working-class man on the rise, a "temporary gentleman," who inhabits a sexual, social, and moral no-man's-land.