Editor: With Life Class, you’ve returned to the World War I setting of your Regeneration trilogy. What is it about the Great War that you find so compelling? Why do you think readers are still interested in one of the last century’s many great conflicts?

Pat Barker: The Great War was the first time most people were made aware of the terrible effects of modern weapons on fragile human bodies. The shock of this still lingers.

It’s war as a human experience that I find compelling. All wars are different but they are also alike. It’s the inhumanity of man to man that interests me along with all the attempts by organizations such as the Red Cross and Red Crescent to lessen its impact on the most vulnerable.

I would expect readers to go on being interested in the conflicts of the last century because we know more about them than we do about contemporary conflicts which are obscured by propaganda and disinformation and this enables us two think about the dilemmas of conflict more clearly. (more…)