Anatomy of a Soldier - Tapa dura

It's marvellously told and this way of telling it ... giving the inanimate a voice ... is both engrossing and distancing and I know of nothing quite like it. (Alan Bennett)

It is a novel of concentrated ferocity and chilling accomplishments, tense and unflinching but alive to every nuance of feeling. (Hilary Mantel)

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. (Edna O'Brien)

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. (Nadeem Aslam)

Highly original. This is a compassionate and compelling book where the artefacts and detritus of war tell their own emotive stories. The language has a clarity about it that elevates it to the beautiful. (Kate Hamer, author of The Girl in the Red Coat)

We've become desensitized to war stories, but Harry Parker - not simply through the originality of his approach but also through skillful storytelling, intimate observation, and an endless ability to surprise and move the reader - cuts past our calluses and delivers a bold new narrative of war and its aftermath. (Phil Klay, author of Redeployment)

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. (General (Ret) David Petraeus, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, 2010-11)

One of the most beautifully constructed and moving books I've read in a long time. (Val McDermid)

[A] gripping wartime story boldly and creatively told ... Parker's unflinching tone lends the novel its lasting power. (Publishers Weekly)

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. (Kirkus Reviews)

Harry Parker grew up in Wiltshire. 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.