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Anatomy of a Soldier: A novel
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Published:
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 2016
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Description
Anatomy of a Soldier is a stunning first novel—of patriotism, heroism, and profound humanism—that will immediately take its place on the shelf of classics about what it truly means to be at war.

Let’s imagine a man called Captain Tom Barnes, aka BA5799, who’s leading British troops in the war zone. And two boys growing up together there, sharing a prized bicycle and flying kites before finding themselves estranged once foreign soldiers appear in their countryside. And then there’s the man who trains one of them to fight against the other’s father and all these infidel invaders. Then imagine the family and friends who radiate out from these lives, people on all sides of this conflict where virtually everyone is caught up in the middle of something unthinkable.
But then regard them not as they see themselves but as all the objects surrounding them do: shoes and boots, a helmet, a bag of fertilizer, a medal, a beer glass, a snowflake, dog tags, and a horrific improvised explosive device that binds them all together by blowing one of them apart—forty-five different narrators in all, including the multiple medical implements subsequently required to keep Captain Barnes alive.
The result is a novel that reveals not only an author with a striking literary talent and intelligence but also the lives of people—whether husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter—who are part of this same heart-stopping journey. A work of extraordinary humanity and hope, created out of something hopeless and dehumanizing, it makes art out of pain and suffering and takes its place in a long and rich line of novels that articulate the lives that soldiers lead. In the boom of an instant, and in decades of very different lives and experiences, we see things we’ve never understood so clearly before.
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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
05/17/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781101946640
ASIN:
B015VACH0Y
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Citations
APA Citation (style guide)

Harry Parker. (2016). Anatomy of a Soldier: A novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Harry Parker. 2016. Anatomy of a Soldier: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Harry Parker, Anatomy of a Soldier: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Harry Parker. Anatomy of a Soldier: A Novel. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Jun 12, 2018 19:26:16
Date Updated:
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      • bioText: HARRY PARKER grew up in Wiltshire and was educated at University College London. He joined the British Army when he was twenty-three and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009. He now lives in London. He’s also a painter, attends art school, and has completed a postgrad degree at the Royal Drawing School. He sea-kayaks in his spare time.
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title
Anatomy of a Soldier
fullDescription
Anatomy of a Soldier is a stunning first novel—of patriotism, heroism, and profound humanism—that will immediately take its place on the shelf of classics about what it truly means to be at war.

Let’s imagine a man called Captain Tom Barnes, aka BA5799, who’s leading British troops in the war zone. And two boys growing up together there, sharing a prized bicycle and flying kites before finding themselves estranged once foreign soldiers appear in their countryside. And then there’s the man who trains one of them to fight against the other’s father and all these infidel invaders. Then imagine the family and friends who radiate out from these lives, people on all sides of this conflict where virtually everyone is caught up in the middle of something unthinkable.
But then regard them not as they see themselves but as all the objects surrounding them do: shoes and boots, a helmet, a bag of fertilizer, a medal, a beer glass, a snowflake, dog tags, and a horrific improvised explosive device that binds them all together by blowing one of them apart—forty-five different narrators in all, including the multiple medical implements subsequently required to keep Captain Barnes alive.
The result is a novel that reveals not only an author with a striking literary talent and intelligence but also the lives of people—whether husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter—who are part of this same heart-stopping journey. A work of extraordinary humanity and hope, created out of something hopeless and dehumanizing, it makes art out of pain and suffering and takes its place in a long and rich line of novels that articulate the lives that soldiers lead. In the boom of an instant, and in decades of very different lives and experiences, we see things we’ve never understood so clearly before.
reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: Michael Moritz, The Wall Street Journal
      • content: "This is one of the most intimate and detailed accounts of a wounded soldier's recovery ever committed to paper. . . . Behind this absorbing novel lies the indomitable spirit of Harry Parker. He has fought his way back from the darkest boundary of life to become a husband, father and, as this book shows, a writer of gifts and promise."
      • premium: False
      • source: Marilyn Dahl, Shelf Awareness
      • content: "Harry Parker's novel is a stunning concept, with stunning execution."
      • premium: False
      • source: Publishers Weekly
      • content: "A gripping wartime story boldly and creatively told . . . Parker is invested in expressing the particulars of war with surprising intimacy, and the unique structure with multiple viewpoints ultimately reveals harsh truths about the countless cogs in the machine of war . . . Parker's unflinching tone lends the novel its lasting power."
      • premium: False
      • source: Kirkus Reviews
      • content: "This debut novel chronicles a soldier's maiming and recovery with an inventiveness that in no way mitigates war's searing heartbreak--or the spirit's indomitability . . . Parker's storytelling device of using objects as his narrators intensifies the reader's focus on the human emotions . . . You couldn't call this novel an antiwar tract . . . But you could certainly label it a pro-understanding work of art--and those may be more in need right now than ever before."
      • premium: False
      • source: Booklist (starred)
      • content: "An arresting and unconventional first novel . . . Anatomy of a Soldier is disorienting but deeply compelling."
      • premium: False
      • source: Anthony Loyd, The New Statesman
      • content: "A great novel: a defining work about a place beyond survival, where the terribly damaged succeed not just in living and adapting, but in bringing illumination back from the abyss. It will be read with wonder, with respect and with gratitude."
      • premium: False
      • source: Deirdre O'Brien, Sunday Mirror
      • content: "Raw, uncompromising and courageous, this is a brilliant and unforgettable book."
      • premium: False
      • source: Carl Wilkinson, Financial Times
      • content: "Parker manages to create great moments of suspense and pathos, thanks largely to the innovative structure he employs . . .Following the well-worn advice given to first-time novelists, Parker has written about what he knows. It just happens that he's done it unusually well."
      • premium: False
      • source: Chris Power, The Guardian
      • content: "[Parker's] prose, economical but evocative and at times wincingly graphic, confidently shepherds you through the ruptured timeline . . . morally and emotionally complex."
      • premium: False
      • source: Esquire [UK]
      • content: "A mighty achievement . . . stark and superb."
      • premium: False
      • source: Thomas Gaughan, Booklist (starred)
      • content: "An arresting and unconventional first novel . . . Anatomy of a Soldier is disorienting but deeply compelling."
      • premium: False
      • source: Hilary Mantel
      • content: "It is a novel of concentrated ferocity and chilling accomplishments, tense and unflinching but alive to every nuance of feeling."
      • premium: False
      • source: The Guardian (U.K.)
      • content: "A new take on the war novel. . . both disorienting and captivating. . . nuanced and wonderfully complex."
      • premium: False
      • source: General (Ret) David Petraeus, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, 2010-2011
      • content: "A riveting, evocative, brutally realistic read. Anatomy of a Soldier is a novel, but one clearly based on the author's searing experiences in combat and during recovery. It provides a vivid description of life as a soldier in Afghanistan and of life after being seriously wounded. What Harry Parker has written will enthrall, enlighten, and stay with readers."
      • premium: False
      • source: Nadeem Aslam
      • content: "A tour de force. In this brilliant and beguiling novel Harry Parker sees the hidden forces that act on the bodies and souls of combatants and non-combatants. These pages are dangerous but they contain compassion and sorrow too. There is wonder here at what men have done to themselves. It feels like war through the looking glass but it is utterly real."
      • premium: False
      • source: Edna O'Brien
      • content: "This is a brilliant book, direct from the battle zone, where all the paraphernalia of slaughter is deployed to tell its particular and savage story."
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        March 28, 2016
        Parker’s debut novel is a gripping wartime story boldly and creatively told from the points of view of inanimate objects surrounding those involved in the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. These includes bullets, guns, drones, bombs, wheelchairs, catheters, prosthetic limbs, and an oscillating saw used during amputations, each of which provides a unique piece of the overall experience of a British captain, Tom Barnes, and his team’s involvement in the complicated struggle abroad. Barnes’s story frequently intersects with that of two young men, Faridun and Latif, who were close friends growing up in the war zone but are now torn apart by differing allegiances to those actively fighting the “infidels” and those who seek to restore the peace. The narrative vacillates between wartime scenes and their aftermath; many of the most affecting sequences involve Barnes back at home with family and friends as he recovers from his experience at war and adjusts to the new circumstances of his life. The tragic deterioration of the friendship between Faridun and Latif during Barnes’s time at war is brutal and heartbreaking. Parker, a former soldier himself, is invested in expressing the particulars of war with surprising intimacy, and the unique structure with multiple viewpoints ultimately reveals harsh truths about the countless cogs in the machine of war. A particularly detailed amputation scene is deliberately wrenching, and Parker’s unflinching tone lends the novel its lasting power.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        April 1, 2016
        This debut novel by a British combat veteran chronicles a soldier's maiming and recovery with an inventiveness that in no way mitigates war's searing heartbreak--or the spirit's indomitability. In the tradition of Dalton Trumbo's 1939 classic, Johnny Got His Gun, which takes place in the shattered consciousness of a horrifically wounded World War I doughboy, Parker's novel makes vivid the drudgery, dread, and appalling spoils of war. Weaving back and forth through time, the narrative focuses on events leading up to and following a land-mine explosion in an unnamed Mideast war zone where a British soldier, introduced as BA5799 but later revealed to be Capt. Tom Barnes, is deployed. The story not only takes in Barnes, but also some of the people for whom the war zone is home, including those responsible for assembling the IED whose detonation causes Capt. Barnes to lose both his legs. What's different about Parker's approach to this story is the way he gives the point of view in each chapter to an inanimate object, whether it's a bag of fertilizer used to make the device or the device itself; whether it's the fungus infecting one of Barnes' shattered legs or the saw used to cut off that leg. Everything from the paper used to print a photo to shaving cream to a backpack to a catheter to an army boot bears witness to the jumbled sequence of events behind Barnes' injury and his rehabilitation. It's a risky way of telling such a harsh story, to say the least. Yet rather than alienating readers from this drama, Parker's storytelling device of using objects as his narrators intensifies the reader's focus on the human emotions--and to Parker's credit, it isn't just Barnes, his family and friends, doctors, nurses, and fellow soldiers who are given dimension, but also the Muslims dedicated to killing as many of the "infidel" invaders as they can. You couldn't call this novel an anti-war tract; it's too grounded in matters of patriotism and duty for that. But you could certainly label it a pro-understanding work of art--and those may be more in need right now than ever before.

        COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from March 15, 2016
        Parker has written an arresting and unconventional first novel. It concerns a British Army soldier identified only as BA5799, recently arrived in an unnamed war zone. In time, the reader learns that BA5799 is Captain Tom Barnes, who loses both legs to an improvised mine. The novel also focuses on two boys, Latif and Faridun, who were friends through childhood. Then Latif is drawn into insurgency, and the teens become estranged. The unconventionality comes in the narrative; each short chapter is related from the point of view of an object: Faridun's bicycle, a bag of fertilizer that becomes the IED that takes Barnes' legs, a single bullet in a rifle magazine. The narration is concise yet often detailed, whether the subject matter is Barnes' rehabilitation or Latif's family life. The objects are conscious of the events they relate, but only the fungus exploded into Barnes' ravaged body is self-conscious. It matter-of-factly notes that its destiny is to kill its host and thereby kill itself. Anatomy of a Soldier is disorienting but deeply compelling, and that quality is only heightened by the knowledge that the author suffered the same injuries as his protagonist.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

popularity
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Anatomy of a Soldier is a stunning first novel—of patriotism, heroism, and profound humanism—that will immediately take its place on the shelf of classics about what it truly means to be at war.

Let’s imagine a man called Captain Tom Barnes, aka BA5799, who’s leading British troops in the war zone. And two boys growing up together there, sharing a prized bicycle and flying kites before finding themselves estranged once foreign soldiers appear in their countryside. And then there’s the man who trains one of them to fight against the other’s father and all these infidel invaders. Then imagine the family and friends who radiate out from these lives, people on all sides of this conflict where virtually everyone is caught up in the middle of something unthinkable.
But then regard them not as they see themselves but as all the objects surrounding them do: shoes and boots, a helmet, a bag of fertilizer, a medal, a beer glass,...
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