Life Class

Pat Barker

Aug 2008 · The Life Class Trilogy Book 1 · Penguin UK

About this eBook

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AND WOMEN'S PRIZE SHORTLISTED AUTHOR OF THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS

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

'Triumphant, inspiring, shattering' The Times

Spring, 1914. The students at the Slade School of Art gather in Henry Tonks' 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?

'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

The Life Class trilogy:
Life Class
Toby's Room
Noonday

About the author

Pat Barker was born in Yorkshire and began her literary career in her forties, when she took a short writing course taught by Angela Carter. Encouraged by Carter to continue writing and exploring the lives of working class women, she sent her fiction out to publishers. Thirty-five years later, she has published fifteen novels, including her masterful Regeneration Trilogy, been made a CBE for services to literature, and won awards including the Guardian Fiction Prize and the UK's highest literary honour, the Booker Prize. She lives in Durham and her new novel, The Silence of the Girls, will be published by Hamish Hamilton in August 2018.