The Eye in the Door (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Pat Barker
- First Published: 1993
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1918
- Setting: London and Manchester, England
- Principal Characters: Billy Prior, Charles Manning, Siegfried Sassoon, Dr. William Rivers, Dr. Henry Head, Beattie Roper, Hettie Roper, Lionel Spragge, Harold Spencer
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: History, Children, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Psychology or psychologists, World War I, Government, Ireland or Irish people, Paranoia, Wounds or injuries
- Locales: London, England, Manchester, England
In many respects The Eye in the Door is a sequel to Pat Barker’s 1992 novel Regeneration. Barker found the sources for both novels in accounts of the lives of two historical figures—the famous antiwar poet Siegfried Sassoon and William Rivers, a neurologist who treated soldiers who had returned from the front in World War I. The real Rivers actually worked at Craiglockhart, a hospital in Scotland, and he did treat Sassoon there in 1917 and in London in 1918. Barker’s imagination transforms these historical sources and creates complex literary characters who interact...
[The entire page is 1901 words long]
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