Double Vision

First lines

CHRISTMAS WAS OVER.

About this book

Insomnia, exhaustion, recurring nightmares – Stephen Sharkey is suffering the aftereffects of his career as a war reporter, most recently in Afghanistan, where Ben Frobisher, war photographer and friend, has been shot dead on assignment. Hanging up his flak jacket and turning his back on the everyday reality of war, Stephen moves into a quiet and peaceful cottage in the north of England. It seems the perfect environment in which to write his book on the representations of war – one that will be based largely on Ben Frobisher's work. But Stephen's supposed isolation offers no protection from other people's suffering or the shattering effects of human brutality . . .

Themes & subjects

About the author

Pat Barker

8 May 1943

Patricia Mary W. Barker (née Drake; born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. She is known for her *Regeneration* Trilogy, published in the 1990s, and for a series of books set during the Trojan War, starting with *The Silence of the Girls.*