Available Formats
Paperback, Main
Published: 25th January 2017
Hardback, Main
Published: 1st April 2016
Paperback, Export - Airside ed
Published: 25th February 2016
Anatomy of a Soldier
By (Author) Harry Parker
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
25th February 2016
Export - Airside ed
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Short-listed for Authors' Club Best First Novel Award 2017
Paperback
320
Width 153mm, Height 234mm, Spine 24mm
437g
Let's imagine a man called Tom Barnes, aka BA5799, who's leading British troops in the war zone. And two boys growing up together, riding a prized bicycle and flying kites, before finding themselves estranged once foreign soldiers appear in their countryside; and the man who trains one to fight against the other's father and these infidels. Then include the family and friends who radiate out from these lives, people on all sides of this conflict with most everyone caught in the middle. But then imagine not how they see themselves but as all the objects surrounding them do -- their shoes, a helmet, a trove of dollars, a drone, that bike, weaponry, a bag of fertilizer, a medal, beer glass, a snowflake, dogtags, or a horrific explosion that ties them all together and the various medical impliments that are subsequently employed. The result is a novel that amplifies what Tim O'Brien accomplished in his legendary The Things They Carried, and reveals a man of enormous character in Captain Barnes as well as all the people who were part of this same heart-stopping journey.
Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire. He was educated at Falmouth College of Art and University College London. He joined the British Army when he was 23 and served in Iraq in 2007 and Afghanistan in 2009 as a Captain. He is now a writer and artist and lives in London. He sea kayaks in his spare time.