Plagued by nightmarish memories of the trenches where he saw his brother die, Nick's grandfather Gordie lays dying as Nick struggles to keep the peace in his increasingly fractious home. As Nick's suburban family loses control over their world, Nick begins to learn his grandfather's buried secrets and comes to understand the power of old wounds to leak into the present. As a study of the power of memory and loss, Pat Barker's Another World conveys with extraordinary intensity the ways in which the violent past returns to haunt and distort the present.
"Another World demonstrates the extraordinary immediacy and vigor of expression we have come to expect from Barker . . . A powerful and moving and deeply humane study of the tyranny of the past and the quandaries of the present."
Barry Unsworth, The New York Times Book Review
"[Pat Barker] is the natural successor to George Orwell, like him a keen and passionate defender of humiliated children, foot soldiers and what's become of the British working class."
Newsday
"One of Pat Barker's gifts is her mix of compassion and bleak realism . . . Barker's confidence as a stripped-down, elegant stylist is evenly matched by her moral depth."
