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Walking Wounded

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9781473663107

Price: £8.99

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE PAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE

*’100 Best Reads for Summer’, Sunday Times*

*’Best Summer Reads’, Irish Times*

*’8th July Pick of the Week’, Sunday Times*

An expertly imagined novel about war’s long trail of damage, and about healing intentions gone savagely wrong.’ Hilary Mantel

‘The atmosphere of the late forties is brilliantly evoked . . . a compassionate and compelling account of post traumatic stress in veterans of the Second World War while bringing individual patients and their psychiatrists vividly to life.’ Pat Barker

Set in Northfield, an understaffed military psychiatric hospital immediately before the NHS is founded, Walking Wounded is the story of a doctor and his patient: David Reece, a young journalist-to be whose wartime experiences in Burma have come back to haunt him violently; and Daniel Carter, one of the senior psychiatrists, a man who is fighting his own battles as well as those of his patients.

This moving and impressive debut explores violence and how much harm it does to those forced to inflict it in the name of war. It also captures the dilemmas of the medics themselves as they attempt to ‘fix’ their patients, each of whom raise the question of what has happened to their humanity, what can be done to help them, and what we are willing to sacrifice in the name of healing.

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Reviews

An expertly imagined novel about war's long trail of damage, and about healing intentions gone savagely wrong. Walking Wounded will engage fans of Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy
Hilary Mantel
Meticulously researched, emotionally devastating: a work of uncommon brilliance.
Ian Samson
An astute and powerful portrayal of the damage inflicted by war and the suffering often caused by misguided attempt to repair it. An extremely impressive first novel that combines a delicacy of language and a profound strength of insight.
David Park
An astonishing novel: beautifully crafted, with compelling characters and a gripping story . . . Llewellyn is an elegant, truthful writer.
Cathy Galvin
The atmosphere of the late forties is brilliantly evoked . . . a compassionate and compelling account of post traumatic stress in veterans of the 2nd world war while bringing individual patients and their psychiatrists vividly to life
Pat Barker
If you're looking for a novel that is profoundly revelatory and comes with a huge punch of impact about something vitally important, this is it. It's hard to believe it's a debut novel, it's so assured . . . Highly recommended.
Bookbag
Llewellyn has taken the harrowing subject of PTSD and used it to produce a haunting debut novel . . . The level of detail in the book is remarkable
Eithne Shortall, Irish Sunday Times
Reminiscent of Pat Barker's Regeneration, and its portraits of damaged soldiers from an earlier conflict, this is a novel that matches Barker's work in its exploration of the trauma wars inflict on those who fight them.
Nick Rennison, Sunday Times
Writing about a hospitalised and traumatised poet is to invite comparisons to Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy about shell-shocked First World War poets. Llewellyn's shocking and moving debut can hold its own even in that celebrated company.
Antonia Senior, Book of the Month, The Times
A richly researched tale that stars cameos of the real-life medics who advocated brain surgery as a cure for the psychic scars of service. If that seems an outrage today, Llewellyn's achievement in this tender period piece is to evoke an incendiary sense of scandal, while avoiding all trace of we-know-better-now smugness.
Anthony Cummins, Daily Mail
A moving novel exploring the effects of PTSD post World War II
Emerald Street
Quietly self-assured [and] deeply touching
Elizabeth Lowry, Fiction Book of the Day, Guardian
Llewellyn's considerable gifts keep us gripped to the end even when the pain described becomes almost unbearable. The beauty and skill of her own writing is the best testament to her belief in the redemptive power of art.
Irish Times
A remarkably nuanced debut about the human consequences of war
The National
Powerful, shocking, enlightening, moving, and beautifully written
Irish Examiner